The Big One! The one place that if you come to London, you cannot miss. To see the entire collection of the museum in any real detail would take several days, we focused only on the Egyptian and Greco-Roman collections, and even so taking a whole day (or at least until we were physically tired spending six hours on our feet) we didn’t see anything like all there is to see, even restricting ourselves to just these. But then we did linger over every carving and inscription. We’re not just tourists, we’re culturally aware, extra appreciative M&S tourists ;p
For those who last visited the museum several years ago (as was the case with myself) the changes that have been made recently will shock and awe you. The rebuilding of the Great Court and reading room is absolutely incredible. One of the truly worthy, well designed, well thought out, and out and out beautiful of the millennium projects. The entrance to the Egyptian Sculpture gallery opens right onto the new Great Court, past a sculpted head of Amunhotep/Amunophis III. Immediately before you will be a massive sea of people crowding round something. Should you be able to get close enough to see it you’ll realise it’s the Rosetta Stone they are looking at.
The other exhibits in the (very large) sculpture gallery include a colossal statue of Ramesses II (who else?!) with a beautiful expression, and many individual statues of various Pharaohs, including several of Amunhotep/Amunophis III. Of particular interest to me was the un-used sarcophagus of Nectanebo II, the last true native Egyptian Pharaoh. Such a historically important and unique piece however has a fairly minor place in the museum, and comparatively little is made of it. Such a shame, as it is beautiful as well as very important. It’s actually quite moving to see and dwell upon. It was found being used for ritual ablutions in an Alexandra mosque at the beginning of the 19th century. This piece, in my view, really should have a more prominent place in the museum.
The collection here is fantastic, and beautifully displayed. We easily spent a few hours here, especially given the interesting collection of stela that are also displayed in this section, including what must be an almost the entire wall carvings of an Old Kingdom mastaba, complete with false doors. Best not to think about how they removed these things from the structure itself, but I doubt it was subtle or respectful. Things generally weren’t in those days…
Another interesting piece here that many miss is at one end of the gallery. Just by the entrance into the Assyrian palace reliefs corridor (whose art and architecture seems strange and alien, to those accustomed to Egyptian or Hellenic styles) there is a fairly small but very important, and beautifully carved piece that is the actual naos of a cult statue from a temple – the inner most and most sacred part, where the God lives, the divine Ka focusing itself here. If the temples were the Mansions of the Gods, then the naos was the most private, intimate quarters of the the Mansion owner. Traditionally they were in the inner most part of the temple, a dark place where ideally only Pharaoh or his representative in the form of highest priests would actually see. So it’s quite an important find, and relativly few are to be found in museums, but again, it doesn’t get much attention, so make sure to see it.
A final piece down on the sculpture gallery you must be suitably appreciative of is what I nickname the “Reunification Stela” of Ahmose/Amosis I, founder of the New Kingdom, and the 18th Dynasty, and the New Kingdom Empire in the Near East. He’s my personal “hero without equal” :-)
And he has a stela in the BM! Again a rather ignored piece, high up one wall this is in two pieces, showing him on one side with the deities and crown of Upper Egypt and on the other in mirror image with the deities and crown of Lower Egypt. It only gets a passing glance by most, yet this piece that represents a true “day that shook the world”.
Moving upstairs you come first of all to the Papyri collection, which has the originals of some documents that have becomes almost standard references in Egyptology, particularly those from Deir El Medina, such as letters to family. It’s hard to imagine looking at these documents that you are actually looking at some hastily written letter of fairly minor importance from three and half thousand years ago, things that – unlike temples, tombs and the like – were never intended to be seen, known and remembered so far in the future. These have a huge impact, in all ways. You have a sense of looking into someone’s daily life, but also a slight sense of going through peoples mail!
Also on the upper floor you find day to day items and these are the most touching. You truly can see and feel a people separated by so many thousands of years and, compared to western culture, such a vastly different world view, but so very much like us. They had spoons, tweezers, combs, chairs, beds, toys and games just like us. They eat, slept, worked, got bored, had sex, played, prayed, worried about their kids going delinquent on them… We aren’t so different, for all our differences! Just that we’ve got reality TV though, beat that!
Definitely make time for this collection though. The model boat is fantastic, though the truly strange thing was the senet board they have. I have one. I’ll sit down of an evening after work or on a day off and play a few games with friends or family under the grapevine and talk over a drink. The pleasures in life are the same for all of us, down to an almost identical game board.
Moving on you come to the coffin room. Whoever said you can’t take it all with you when you go has obviously never seen an Egyptian coffin, let alone the rest of the vast array of paraphernalia surrounding being dead. Never mind Eva Peron, there is only one way to die, the upper-class Egyptian way (unless you have worked against Ma’at, in which case you might want to consider being Agnostic).
Beautiful though it is, and it really is, I cannot help but feel a tad unsure of myself at this point. I came here as part of BSS to do practical exercises in translation. I wonder what the Japanese tourists made of a bunch of British people knelt and sat before this coffin, being led by one standing person, getting them to chant in unison an Egyptian coffin inscription?
Such is the life of the modern day servant of Thoth/Djehuty.
At the end of the day, whilst it might havefelt slightly uncomfortable to be copying notes from a coffin, I do think everyone present had a respect for the people whose artefacts we were studying, and I suspect in some way those concerned would probably be smugly pleased that their names and deeds (exaggerated or otherwise…) are better known by more people now, than they were when they were alive. Am I correct, Mereri?
So, the British Museum, definitely worth several days of your time.
Getting there:
Too big to miss, you’ll have no trouble finding it. Just go to Tottenham Court Road tube and head out the museum exit then follow the crowd and signs out along New Oxford Street (Eastbound) then along Gower Street (Northbound) then first right onto Russell Street. The Museum main entrance is here, you can’t miss it! There is no parking.
Entrance is free, but there is a donations collection in the main entrance which you are honour bound to give something to (by which I do not mean 10p or 50p!)
Opening Times:
Opening hours are quite long, generally 9am to 5:30pm 7 days a week. On Thursday and Friday opening is until 8:30pm for certain galleries, including most of the Egpytian collection as well as the Parthenon, Greco-Roman Sculpture, Greek Italy and Ancient Cyprus (got to see it) from the Greek collection, amongst others. Visting on the late opening times can help get around the crowds, particularly in the Egyptian Sculpture gallery which gets very crowded.
Notes:
Please please please, if you visit, do NOT do what many visitors do and finger the Egyptian sculpture! And please resist the urge to sit in the offering bowels! These items are precious and irreplaceable and should be treated as such. If we wish them to last forever we must be gentle with them. Touching granite may not seem to do harm, but it does when tens of thousands of people do them same, every day.
Photography is permitted. There are a range of guidebooks sold by the museum with photographs, however for guides of the exhibits these are not always useful as are aimed more as souvenirs than as an academic work. The museum also publishes it’s own academic works separately, which may be of more interest. Guided tours of particular galleries are available at a fair price, if you want them, but it’s better to explore in your own time, and exhibits are labelled in varying degrees of detail (some very good, others brief)
Website: http://www.thebritishmuseum.ac.uk
Tags: Ancient Egypt, Ancient Egypt in London, BM, British Museum, Egyptian Antiquities, Egyptian Archaeology, Egyptian Collection, Egyptian Sculpture Gallery, Egyptology, London, The British Museum, Travelogue
