Finally ~ time to give a heads up!
I am traveling, and aside from an
Insecure Writer's Support Group post,
I will probably not post until I get home.
I want to spend my on-line time reading your blog posts instead!
I'm going to upload some photos I posted
on Facebook a few minutes ago.
Today was a day for crossing off Bucket List items ~
namely artifacts I've always long to see.
How to start a museum day?
With a morning sit in our private English garden
off Kensington Park Gardens road? street?
We connected with our wonderful London Walks guide Delianne
outside the Holborn Metro stop.
Then it was off to the British Museum,
an amazing and wonderful place!
Down went the Bucket List items one by one!
If you grew up with a mother
who loved ancient history and art,
then you grew up knowing about
and longing to see certain artifacts.
Today I crossed off four bucket item artifacts
during a whirlwind tour of the British Museum!
I have waited for these most of my life:
the Rosetta Stone,
the Assyrian Lion Hunt,
the Elgin marbles,
and the Gilgamesh tablets!
OMG!
What a thrill!
What makes me very happy is to know
that my mother also got to see these same things,
a highlight of her life.
My sister Donnie could hardly drag Mom
away from the Assyrian collection!
I felt very close to Mom today!
The Rosetta Stone ~ the Real Deal!
The Assyrian Lion Hunt
This is just one tiny piece of this room filled
with the most incredible scenes
from an Assyrian royal lion hunt.
They were taken from the North Palace of Nineveh,
and date to 645-635 B.C.
King Ashurbanipal is drawing the bow.
The lions are poignantly real!
A Scene from the Elgin Marbles
My mother had a big book filled with art from the ancient world,
and I knew about the Elgin marbles probably before
I started kindergarten ~ Mom's fault!
She filled my head with stories and stories and ART!
This scene shows Hermes, Dionysus, Demeter, and Ares.
It was the first time gods were depicted as regular humans.
Athens Parthenon east frieze 447-432BC
The Gilgamesh Flood Tablet
I plowed through a translation of The Epic of Gilgamesh
in a literature class at Cal State Fullerton.
But I knew about cuneiform tablets and the flood story
long before I landed in that literature class.
It's Mom's fault ~ again!
This is the flood tablet from the Gilgamesh epic
that describes how gods sent a flood to destroy mankind.
Utnapishtim was forewarned and built a boat,
gathered his relatives, craftsmen,
domesticated and wild animals,
and rode out the flood.
Sound familiar?
I saw a number of other amazing artifacts
on our two hour romp through the highlights of the museum.
But the above were Bucket List items!
I managed to sneak off and photograph another artifact
while we were traipsing from here to there with our guide.
It's important to my Celtic heart,
and it made me think of of Debra: She Who Seeks,
a favorite blogger of mine
(who's taking a blogging break right now)!
The Great Torc from Snettisham
This lovely torc dates from Iron Age Britain.
It was found by someone plowing a field
in Ken Hill, Snettisham, Norfolk, England in 1950.
It contains just over a kilogram of gold and silver
twisted into sixty-four strands of metal
that were grouped in strands of eight.
These eight strands were then twisted
into the gorgeous torc.
Source: My scribbled notes from museum tags
What to do after museum overload?
Stop for coffee and cake
in the little La Roma Bella cafe
across the street from the museum.
Note the Ever ~ Patient's feet!
Ahh! Bliss!
Yum!
Until next time ~
I have some blogs I'm longing to read ~
after fish and chips at a pub on Portobello Road!
