the british museum, pt. 1

I say part one because there are a few museums here, this one included, that take literally a week to cover. Here’s a picture of the outside, in all of its magnificence.

There it is, nice ornate columns and facade sculpture and all. When you get inside it’s not in the least bit less impressive.

This is the main lobby, which leads to a number of exhibits on all sides featuring a ludicrous amount of (practically stolen, in a lot of cases) artefacts from around the world. The two exhibits that I have covered so far are Assyrian and Egyptian empires. Probably the most famous artefact possessed by the British Museum is the Rosetta Stone, which is a large block with a carved decree in three different scripts (Greek, Egyptian hieroglyphs, and a common form of writing at the time called Demotic) issued for one of the Ptolemaic Kings after Egypt had been invaded and subdued by Greek civilization. The Rosetta stone served as the first bridge in understanding Egyptian hieroglyphs and now usually has an unbearable amount of people surrounding it on a daily basis.

Here it is at about the closest distance I was able to get to it.

So after standing in awe for a few moments I moved on to the rest of the room, which was pretty cool and contained a few sarcophagi, a few big stone slabs with hieroglyphs, and a few giant figureheads of famous Pharaohs.

This one is of Ramses II, considered the most famous and powerful Pharaoh of the Egyptian Empire. In addition to his achievements, including conquering Canaan and Nubia, he apparently doctored himself into a lot of Egyptian historical documents to make himself appear more awesome than he already was. Oh, and if anyone was wondering why there’s a hole in the statue on the left breast, it was allegedly made by looters attempting to cut off the head of the statue to haul it away. They were probably discouraged after realizing that it’s pretty hard to cut through solid granite.

Next was Assyria.

The Assyrian civilization initially centered itself around the Tigris river before expanding quite a ways, and then being utterly destroyed by the people they had previously conquered. The section of wall you see above is from the palace of Sennacherib in Nineveh, which was one of the largest and prosperous Assyrian cities. It’s also mentioned pretty extensively in the bible.

This carving from Ashurbanipal’s palace in Nineveh depicts some Assyrian warriors having fun with the heads of their enemies after a victory.

This shows a few brave Assyrians floating on inflated pig intestines across a river into battle. A lot of these carvings, which were usually present on the inner palace walls, served as a medium to boast about the King’s exploits to those who requested his council. What would have been neatest about these palaces, however, are their doors.

These giant lions-with-man-heads would be present at the Palace of King Ashurbanipal, had they not be excavated and taken to the British Museum. They served as a ward to evil spirits and the turban placed on the head represented a symbol of royalty. The bearded man however, served as a symbol of divinity and the object he has raised was used in Assyrian mythology to “water the tree of life.”

Aside from spending their time making a cool mythology and extravagant cities and palaces, the Assyrians would sometimes enjoy a good lion hunt. during the time of Ashurbanipal’s life, the Assyrian environment became amiable enough for lions to reproduce at an accelerated rate. The amount of human and livestock deaths resulting from this caused lion hunting to become somewhat of a sport conducted by royalty.

Here you can see a sad sap being stuck with arrows as an Assyrian horseman rides by. Lions would usually be caught in the countryside and killed in an arena by the King and his men as his people would watch. It probably would have been a nice way to spend a Sunday afternoon.

Finally, the Assyrian exhibit offered a pretty extensive view (via these humongous palace wall tablets) of the Assyrian empire’s invasion of Lachish, which at the time belonged to the tribe of Judah.

 

Below are some Assyrian archers in the siege, doin’ what archers do best.

And of course, below we have the scene of surrender before the Assyrian king. If you look closely you can see that the king’s face has been obliterated. Archaeologists speculate that this was done after the fall of the Assyrian empire, by some looter or vandal that didn’t particularly like the fact that the Assyrians conducted this siege.

That’s all for now!