The British Museum

I'd finally had enough of the over-rated shopping experience here in London. Meandering along the shops was getting a bit tiresome and repetitive. Ok, I admit, you can get stuff that you don't get back home and the men's clothing range is so much better here (which benefits me zero) but I had unfortunately set my hopes too high. It was about time I did some proper touristy stuff and the British Museum was first on my list.

The excellent thing about a lot of the museums and galleries in London is that they are free! Wow, could I be more asian? Or Oriental as they say here.

While I am happy to pay good money to see some rotten old artefact, there are plenty of non-geeks who would find that more than unworthy, thus keeping it free might find the inner geek in all of us. Me being a geek (an ultra cool one mind you :P) I went to the museum alone. In a way, I'm kinda glad I went to the museum solo because I think if anyone else accompanied me, apart from Mally (hai moo!), I would totally shit them up the wall with my snail-like pace.

On the downside, going to the museum alone means that I have no one to take silly photos of me posing with old rotten artefacts - all which makes for a very exciting blog. Hence, here is my boring *yawn* British Museum blog. I will do my best to make it *exciting* for you all.

Duh, it's the front of the museum.

Inside the museum. Nice ceiling eh?

As a first timer, I figured I should get some guidance and took an audio highlights tour. It was ok, but kinda over-represented the Korean and African art stakes. Next time I visit the museum I plan to wander the rooms sans audio commentary.

WOW!!! The Rosetta Stone! I can't believe I'm seeing the real thing!! Such history, such awe! And my picture is waaay better than the one on the Wikipedia entry.

As a little chinky girl, I always wanted to see the Egyptian mummies up close and now my dream has come true! *clap clap* I'm not sure why, but the pyramid sculptures were displayed on separate floors to the mummies. Somewhat illogical, but I'm sure the museum have their reasons for doing so.

Ummm, I don't know which pharaoh this is.

And I don't know who these three are either.

Someone's sarcophagus.

Bust of Ramesses the Great

And now, Ramesses without the camera flash on. Looks more scary now eh? I momentarily had a childhood nightmare of the Neverending Story.

The inside of someone's sarcophagus.

Part of the Nereid Monument from Ancient Greece. I don't know why I didn't take any photos of the Parthenon.

At this point in time, I slowed down the photographing as I figured that anyone who saw these photos would just be disinterested as the experience would be equivalent to looking at pictures in a textbook.

Onwards from Ancient Greece and onto Asia. A bronze figure of the Hindu god, Shiva. I resisted taking photos of the Chinese stuff as it just looked like stuff that we have at home.

Now, here I am with the mummies. Somewhat macabre to photograph the dead, but I finally got to see a real mummy!! That woman ruined my photo.

Some pharoah queen.

Oooh, I got really excited here. It's "Ginger" the pre-dynastic Egyptian man whose body was preserved naturally (like a dried salty fish) in the desert. He has red hair, hence the nickname. Wow, he's from about 3400 BC!!!!

Errrm, ok, again I got a bit excited at photographing the dead.

Later, the Egyptians decided to put people in coffins and in doing so, disrupted the natural preservation procedures. Hmmm, just all bones and not a scrap of flesh. Fascinating!!! 8-) *geek*

I then went through all of Medieval Europe, Persian and some classical Roman pieces without taking a single photo. I was very disappointed at not being able to see the Lindow Man aka Bog man as they are currently renovating :(

Finally I finished up with the African art. To my ignorant brain, it all just looked like souvenirs. I guess it is kinda like how I wouldn't be able to tell the difference between a souvenir didgeridoo and a real one.

And now to finish up, here's a photo of some African pottery.

The main conclusion I made (yes I am a geek who likes writing conclusions) about the British Museum was that Britain was mighty good at plundering (and sometimes destroying) valuable, sentimental, culturally identifying goods from other nations. Terrible isn't it? Tsk tsk. On the plus side, I liked seeing all these stolen goodies! Australian museums suck so much.