to Diana,
more cards arrived today, again I will only be making one post today as there are so many photographs of our day out,
glad rags on,
and we were on our way,
to Beckenham Junction,
and after taking a couple of tube trains, arrived at the British Museum,
as it happens we arrived rather wet, it looked nice as we left Beckenham, but in the walk from the tube station to the museum it chucked it down, note to self, never underestimate the effectiveness of a umbrella!
we soon dried out,
as we started looking around the auditorium and shop,
at £13.95 it looked good value, until you realised the one you actually bought was only 9 or 10 inches tall,
it will be so nice when we can all eventually stop wearing masks,
a chocolate telephone box, that defiantly has Diana's number!
we made our way out of the shop, and had a coffee and a snack,
coffee over,
and I was soon snapping away,
and being snapped!
a statue of Sekhmet, King Amenhotep III commissioned hundreds of them, this one from the Thebes, Karnak temple of Mut.
we both found all of this so interesting, we had in fact visited the museum before on a day out, way back in 2017,
the false door and architrave of Ptahshepses,
it is amazing to think of the time and work of carving these huge stature that it must have taken, especially as there were no iron tools, just copper chisels,
it looked a little strange, did you count the feet? two at the front,
and four from the side
this frieze was stunning,
not only for its sheer size,
but the amount of detail it depicted,
another one that you could spend hours looking at,
this one so big I had to use the panorama feature on the camera to get it all in,
we both admired,
one of the many statues of the Crouching Venus surprised at her bath.
we passed through both human headed winged bulls,
found at Nimrud,
these copies,
the originals in the Metropolitan Museum New York,
they were huge,
the stone that is alleged to have started to unlock the system of hieroglyphic writing,
the Rosetta Stone, but strangely enough not the 'Key' that many thought it was in solving the mystery of deciphering of the writings of the ancient Egyptians, it was a help, but not as much as is popularly believed, if you have time read the book, The Keys of Egypt, by Lesley Adkins and Roy Adkins, over the years I have, 3 times, it is a great read,
time for a rest,
we started on our way upstairs,
to the Egyptian section,
and were immediately surrounded by mummies, both small,
and large,
some still displaying,
their original colours,
I mentioned to Diana,
looking at how well some of the colours have been preserved, the temples must have looked so totally different to what we see today as the above groundworks have all lost their colour,
we continued,
our walk through the galleries,
arriving at the Japanese section,
the exhibits showed how although goods were not allowed to be exported for a number of years, items were smuggled overseas,
as well as art works like this one, Oiso-Snipe-rising Marsh, Utagawa Hiroshige, 1797-1858,
towards the end of the Japanese section,
we came across this chap, a tomb figure of a nobleman, this haniwa tomb figure is thought to
represent a nobleman or chieftain, He wears a tall wide-brimmed hat, his hair is plaited in
a style called mizura, and there is a sword on his belt. It came from Ibaraki
prefecture in eastern Japan; it was in
this region that haniwa production became the most advanced. Terracotta,
earthenware, handmade technique, made in Japan, c. 500s CE.
and no visit to Japan would be complete without a look at a traditional tea house,
leaving the Japanese section we passed a replica of 7th-century statue (known as the Kudara Kannon) in
Hōryūji temple, Nara, Japan,
we started back downstairs,
lots of stairs,
a quick rest,
then down again,
to the huge gallery,
that arranged its collection,
in the context of how it would have been classified and viewed when first collected,
the collection was amazing,
and seemed to go on forever,
a quick pose from Diana,
one of the many easily recognised statues in this section, the discus thrower,
plenty of places to sit,
which suited Diana!
there was everything here you could imagine,
from fish,
to books and birds,
and of course the early collectors fasciation with fossils,
to the shells,
found on the shore,
did I mention books?
there were everywhere, literally thousands of them,
we left the knucklebone player, and this is where I am going to stop for today, it has taken an age and I have a dentist appointment, part two of our day out will continue tomorrow, and what fun we had!
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