Today I went to two museums. The first was the Sir John Soane museum. He was an architect in Victorian England, and an avid collector of antiquities. When he died he petitioned parliament to have his house turned into a museum. His son was a bit of an ass, and he wanted to make sure he didn't inherit the house or his collections... I wish I had been allowed to take pictures in there. The museum was very quirky- bits of statues and other antiquities are crammed everywhere!! It was fun to explore- apparently they do a candlelight tour on the first Tuesday of every month. That would have been delightfully creepy! The coolest thing he had was the Sarcophagus of Pharaoh Seti I. It is an enormous engraved limestone sarcophagus from Egypt. Seriously- enourmous. Five of me could fit comfortably in there. Apparently the man who discovered it offered it to the British Museum for 2000 pounds. When they refused, Sir John Soane bought it. It is still considered to be one of the greatest finds in Egyptian archaeology. I bet the Egyptian museum is kicking themselves for missing out on that!
Next I visited the British Museum. They have one of the best Egyptian antiquities collections in the world- maybe better than Egypt itself, sadly.
I saw the Rosetta stone! The Rosetta stone is what allowed archaeologists to decode hieroglyphics. It only took them 25 years... The stele has the same proclamation inscribed on it in three languages- hieroglyphics, demotic, and greek. Since archaeologists could already read greek, and maybe demotic too (?), they could puzzle out what the hieroglyphics said. It is one of the greatest archaeological finds ever.
Power fist!
The British Museum has an entire Greek temple in it. An entire temple!
Gorgeous mural from an Egyptian tomb.
The world's largest scarab sculpture.
Cat mummies
On the left is a baboon mummy and two baby alligator mummies.
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