Travels and Thoughts
Tuesday, 9/10/19
After a great breakfast at the hotel, I went down to the lobby. I called Uber, but the phone wouldn't let me add a payment method. After several attempts, I decided to take the tube. The hotel is located at Charing Cross station, so I just needed to get the correct train. It really wasn't as hard as I thought it would be! I had to take the northern line for two stops to the Tattenham Square station and walk the rest of the way to the British Museum. I had about a half hour to wait as the tour guide was scheduled to meet us at the red phone booth outside the museum at 10am. There was a Starbuck across the street, so I had a Pumpkin Latte while I waited.
Top: main entrance to museum. Left: Aerial of museum - it is a huge building with over 8 million artifacts! Above: main foyer of the British Museum.
The highlight of my trip (at least one of them) was the British Museum. Having taught Keats in British Lit for years, I was so anxious to see the actual Lord Elgin marbles. Our guide mentioned that do not refer to them as the Elgin marbles as Lord Elgin stole them on a trip to Greece.
The British Museum is a public institution dedicated to human history, art and culture. It documents the story of human culture from its beginnings to the present. Established mid 18th century, it was the first public national museum in the world. During the Victorian Age, the "sun never set on the British Empire" so they had access to practically everything in India, Africa, the Americas, etc. The British explorers were also great gathers!
Right: This is one of the hundreds of halls containing artifacts. The museum has an African section, an Americas section, an Egyptian section, a Greek section, etc. all is separate large halls.
The museum is a "working" museum with archeologists and scientists, historians and artists researching among their extensive collections. It would take years to simply see everything there; however, I picked a few of the most impressive (to me) artifacts we saw. At left are two stone axes that date back to 400,000 years ago!
Left: The Portland Vase from Rome about 15 BC to 25 AD. It is made of cameo glass. First the white vase would be blown, and then the blue would be blown over top of the white. When they hardened, the artist would carefully chip awsay the blue leaving the delicate white images! The scene deptict the marriage of Peleus and Thetis whose son Achilles led the Greek armies to Troy.
The Royal Gol cup is a solid gold covered cup decorated with enamel and pearls. It was made for the French royal family at the end of the 14th century, and later belonged to several English monarchs before spending nearly 300 years in Spain. It has been in the British Museum since 1892.
Scenes from the life of Saint Agnes run round the top of the cover and the sloping underside of the main body. The symbols of the Four Evangelists run round the foot of the cup. Around the stem are Tudor roses probably added by Henry VIII. The War of the Roses between the houses of Lancaster and York is the source of the Tudor Rose combining the white and red roses indicating peace and unity between the two houses.
This clock in the form of a galleon dates to about 1585. It was intended to announce banquets at court. The entertainment began with music from a miniature organ inside the hull, drumming and a procession of the little figures on deck. Afterwards the ship would travel across the banquet table. When it stopped, as a grand finale, the front cannon would automatically fire, lighting a fuse that would fire the other cannons. And all of this in the 16th century!
On Seeing the Elgin Marbles
My spirit is too weak—mortality
Weighs heavily on me like unwilling sleep,
And each imagined pinnacle and steep
Of godlike hardship tells me I must die
Like a sick eagle looking at the sky.
Yet 'tis a gentle luxury to weep,
That I have not the cloudy winds to keep,
Fresh for the opening of the morning's eye.
Such dim-conceived glories of the brain
Bring round the heart an indescribable feud;
So do these wonders a most dizzy pain,
That mingles Grecian grandeur with the rude
Wasting of old Time—with a billowy main—
A sun—a shadow of a magnitude.
John Keats - 1795-1821
the Elgin Marbles are a collection of Classical Greek marble sculptures made under the supervision of the architect and sculptor Phidias and his assistants. They were originally part of the temple of the Parthenon and other buildings on the Acropolis of Athens.
These marbles stolen from the Parthenon by Lord Elgin inspired the sonnet at the left. From the death of Keats' parents, leaving his career of an apothecary-surgeon in order to pursue poetry, to caring for his dying brother, and falling in love Keats short life was troubled. When he caught tuberculosis (as had his mother and brother before him) in July of 1820 many of the sonnets he wrote contained his recognition of mortality. The sonnet “On Seeing the Elgin Marbles” tells the reader how John Keats struggles with mortality and that struggle brought this sonnet to express that accepting fate exceeds denying an inevitable death.
To stand in the same spot where Keats stood was something I'll always remember. Of all the Romantic poets, Keats is my favority!
Left: On a totally different note, this mummy is a 5500 year old young man perhaps in his late teens. He was preserved naturally. He was discovered in a pit that was sealed by a large stone. The conditions were such that he was naturally mummified. Through MRI or such, they determined that his organs are still intact but ossified. And here he is, 5500 years later as he died, and her am I looking at his intact remains. It boggles the mind, doesn't it!
And speaking of mind-boggling, here is the Rosetta Stone! The Rosetta Stone was discovered in 1799. It is inscribed with three versions of a decree issued at Memphis, Egypt in 196 BC during the Ptolemaic dynasty on behalf of King Ptolemy V Epiphanes. The top and middle texts are in AncientEgyptian using hieroglyphic and demotic scripts, while the bottom is in Ancient Greek.
Left: Champollion's table of demotic phonetic characters and their Coptic equivalents. If you've done cryptograms, the technique for discovering the meaning was similar. He knew that all three passages said the same thing; therefore, he could create a table showing the characters that were equivalent in all three versions. Since he knew what one of the texts said, he could figure out the equivalent symbols in the others.
It is called the Rosetta Stone because it was discovered in the town of Rashid (Rosetta) in the Nile Delta. It had been used as part of building material for construction.
After spending as much time as I could in the British Museum, I walked back to the tube station and took the tube to Charing Cross Station for the last time!
On an earlier walk past Parliament, I saw the signs to the left. There were also protesters shouting their Brexit feelings for everyone to hear. PM Boris Johnson and Brexit are to Britain what Trump and pick an issue (immigration, the wall, tarrifs, etc) are to us. Britain, too, is split among the population.
Less than a week ago, we arrived anxious to see London. Now after days of unbelievable experiences, we were about to head back.
We arrived in Philly early afternoon. Pam drove back to her house where I picked up my truck and drove home.
A special thank you to Pam and Drew for funding my trip to London. It will be my birthday and Christmas gifts for some time to come! Thanks again!