trip log: artifacts and lunatiks

Portable Altar from the British Museum

After a long hiatus, here is the continuation of the Europe trip log!

It was Sunday the 21st of August. Sunday in Harlow means essentially no bus service and given we were very far from the train station, we were at a bit of a loss how to get to London. Thankfully, my cousin generously gave us a ride to Epping, a nearby town that is connected to the tube (zone 6, mind you) and we were able to get to town. By the time we arrived it was time for “second breakfast” since the commute itself is nothing to sneeze at and we had a good 4 hours of artifact-viewing ahead. We had coffee and a bagel at a cafe, then tackled the museum. Naturally, we started with the Egyptian antiquities and saw the Rosetta stone, which has been moved to a more prominent location since my last visit. I particularly enjoyed seeing an large black stone with a carving (perhaps of celestial objects?) that had been re-used as a millstone. We wandered into the Persian/Assyrian/Hittite area and saw an entire hallway filled with carvings from the palace of Ashurnasir (although I might have this mixed up with another palace). One story was of some prisoners who escaped a castle by swimming down the nearby river holding on to animal skins sewn closed and filled with air. We also saw the brass fittings of 7-metre tall door and some more gryphons and lions (Ishtar’s of course). Next it was upstairs to see British & European artifacts including some lovely Roman mosaics, Bas-Yutz Flagons, a variety of paintings of St. George and the Dragon, and some fasctinating midieval artifacts. I found the “portable alters” intriguing. There was also an apocraphyl illustrated story of the life of Jesus that went something like this: Jesus and a boy were playing together. The other boy did something to make Jesus angry and he used his God-like power to strike the other boy dead. Mary comes along and scolded Jesus, who resignedly restored the boy’s life. Classic.

Of course no trip is complete without visiting the Greek area which features statues and carvings that used to be in the Pantheon (and may return to Greece soon). After this we took a detour to the Korean gallery where we saw some celadon pottery and a “go” board. Dan, a fan of “go” was quite pleased to see it, but noticed the pieces were not set up correctly. The board is actually a cube and there are metal strings tied taught underneath the top, so every time a piece is set down, it makes a sound. For no apparent reason, out in the hallway there was a collection of statues of Indian gods carved in black stone. We then visited the large hall with Indian and East Asian artifacts including carvings from the Stupa of Amaravati. There were many interesting sculptures there, but we were starting to run out of energy and didn’t make it through all of it, as much as we wanted to.

We went outside, sat down on the bench, and had a snack. Once we were up to walking again, we headed off to Hyde Park and walked to Speaker’s Corner. It was quite an interesting collection of people including old-timey tent-revival style preaching, groups of Mullahs and serious-looking men, Christian atheists, consirpacy theorists and so-forth. There were two men having a debate on the grass and everyone was crowded around them, so it must have been an interesting one.

We took the tube back to Epping and met up with my second cousin and his partner. It had been 12 years since I saw him last, so it was really nice that we had a chance to see each other. We all went to a chip shop for supper. We then went down the street to a pub for a pint (half, in my case) and had an interesting discussion about cybernetics. Back at their flat they gave us some advice on what to see in London and then it was time to head back. We took a taxi to Harlow which was quite reasonably priced at only 9 quid.