BRITISH MUSEUM

I was staying just around the corner from the British Museum so figured I had better visit it. What a surprise when one of the first things I saw was home!

It was part of a display called “Sustaining Each Other”. There was a picture of my husbands cousin Hone Sadler along with many Maori carvings, flax and feather pieces.

This museum is so huge that I just made the effort to see most of the “Don't miss” pieces.

The Lewis Chessmen set. The most famous chess set in the world. They are made of walrus ivory and whales' teeth in the forms of seated kings and queens, mitred bishops, knights on their mounts, standing warders and pawns in the shape of obelisk. Probably made in Norway about 1150-1200.

Some things there were too many people in front of me to get a decent photo. Got a good glimpse of the Rosetta Stone. This dated to 196 BC. It is a priestly decree written three ways – hieroglyphs, for the priests, demotic, the ancient Egyptian script and Greek the language of the administration. Scholars have used this stone to teach them how to read hieroglyphs.

I was fascinated by some of the biblical relics. I am amazed that people can read what has been written on the terracotta cylinders about Nebuchadnezzar's buildings. Dating back to 605-562 BC. There were pieces of clay tablets that gave details of Babylon.

Some other clay tablets give the information about the Tower of Babel that the drawing is based upon.

They had some great brick makers during the reign of Nebuchadnezzar II 605- 562 BC. The piece showing the roaring lion comes from his throne room.

The panel shows the Assyrian army attacking the Egyptian city of Memphis in 667 BC.

At various places throughout the museum there were touching centres. Here you could handle some of the pieces. Among the coins was this Greek silver coin. It has the head of Athena on it. It felt much heavier than our silver coins because it was all silver, dating back to 400 BC.

There was a fragment of a Roman terracotta bowl. Would have loved to see the whole bowl. Rather ingenious actually. It was quite large. There was a large lip around the edges which meant it would have been easy to carry. Grit had been mixed in the terracotta. It was thick near the top edges and smoother further down. This way you could grind your spices etc near the top and then drop them into the bowl. The original word for it is mortarium where we get the word mortar from today. 

I spent a few hours there and only saw a fraction of what the museum held.