Ancient Civilizations and No Stripper

11-16-2008

With only a few weekends left in London, I need to budget my time wisely and hit up what is absolutely essential. From what I had heard, the British museum is one of these such essentials. So today Luke and I gave ourselves a little education and soaked in thousands of years of art.

But first, food was necessary so what better for brunch than a pie from a delicious little Italian place off of Goodge Street.

The museum lived up to it’s reputation, full of priceless artifacts from ancient civilizations like friezes from the Parthenon. I learned today that those actually would have been painted. There was a computer simulation of what the Parthenon would have looked like with these strips of painted sculptures at the base of the roof. There were many scenes throughout the gallery that were either completely or 75% intact. The ruins were actually set up in the gallery approximately as they would have been in the Parthenon, so with the right amount of imagination, I felt like I was there, sandals, tunic, and all.

We even got our feet sandy as we headed back to ancient Egypt via a tour with a lovely volunteer. She told us all about the different dynasties and how the empire evolved with each new pharaoh. While their civilizations were evolving, some of their supposedly ‘new technologies’ didn’t quite work as well as those of old, particularly when it came to burial rituals. A very primitive Egyptian burial was simply a pit dug in the desert sand in which the body was places with whatever objects he or she made need for the afterlife. No sarcophagus, no tomb. Just sand. This preserved the body incredibly well, however, left the body susceptible to tomb raiders and scavenger animals. Hence, why they moved to the sarcophaguses and embalming to attempt to preserve the body for use in the afterlife.

Those with servants even had them killed upon their death, because you wouldn't want to lift a finger in the afterlife. One pharaoh eventually saw the cruelty in this, and since he was god after all, declared that servants could carve a figurine of themselves which would act as their masters servant in the afterlife.

We also saw some samurai armor and Japanese art, an entire collection of African art, and even Indian Jone’s Crystal Skull…. not really, but it is a glass skull that is debated to have supernatural powers.

Oh and the key to decoding text of the ancient world, the Rosetta Stone.

The British Museum also rotates some commissioned contemporary art pieces that are displayed amongst the permanent collection. We were lucky enough to see:

Anthony Gormley’s Case for an Angel I

Damien Hirst’s Cornucopia

Ron Mueck’s Mask II

Tim Noble and Sue Webster’s Dark Stuff (various mummified animals, collected on a metal stand with a light projector showing shadow faces)

Marc Quinn’s Siren (Solid gold statue of Kate Moss in a yoga pose)

We felt a lot smarter after leaving the museum, but we didn’t want to feel too pompous. Lucky for us there was a comic book store right across the street! They had some amazing comics, graphic novels, and books. My favorite was the comic of Firefly, a sci-fi/western series that was on Fox for not long enough.

We arrived back at MTH just in time for the guy’s floor party that was being held in the basement. I was really jacked to go because there was rumor that a stipper was going to be there. Truth be told, it was actually kind of lame. They ran out of beer way too fast and the pizza they promised the 40 of us that were there came an two hours late and in the form of four 8inch little pizzas. Certainly not enough to feed a basement full of hungry buzzed guys.

But meh. Got to play some foosball with pantsless little guys, watched the Packers play Chicago, and played cards with some cool guys from all over the world. It was cool having them ask, “where are you from?” Then I’d point to the screen and say, from where this game is being played.

The night ended at ISH bar with great conversation with Deb.