The British Museum Part One

This weekend's trip to a museum with Jenn was to the British Museum. It is ridiculous. Just when you think that you’ve seen enough really important, famous objects you find something else. We made no attempt to visit all of the galleries, yet I still have enough to talk about in multiple blog posts.

There were two things I had to see at the museum- the Rosetta Stone and the Elgin Marbles. The Rosetta Stone is not the most exciting object ever (it is a stone after all) but given that I've always been fascinated by Ancient Egyptian culture since I was a kid it was a *must* visit (more on that in my next post). I knew what it looked like from photos and the copy on display at the Royal Ontario Museum, but I always wondered what the back looks like. I have no photo (everyone and their brother was having their picture taken around it) but I can tell you the back looks, well, like a rough stone.

I wanted to see the Elgin Marbles not because of what they look like, but because as a group they are one of the most disputed museum artifacts on the planet.

Greece has built a gallery for them in an Athens museum that basically acts as a giant ‘we’re waiting’ picket sign to Britain. Their current gallery at the British Museum contains not only a display board explaining what the Marbles are, but also a pamphlet that explains the controversy, with web links to both the Greek Government’s and British Museum’s official views on the subject. Repeated over and over is how they can be viewed free of charge in their current home and all the research that the museum has published about them over the years. The pamphlet also provides a list of other museums that have sculptures from the Parthenon in their collection, which I felt was a bit cheeky. They are currently housed in an airy, purpose-built space that looks like this.

Did I mention there were a lot of people visiting the museum? Getting a photo without someone walking in front of you was quite difficult. The gallery contains a series of friezes that wrap around the space. I was particularly taken with this cow (what is with me and cows in museums? Very random).

But there are also many soldiers on horse-back.

At either end are sculptures from the Parthenon that had the most luscious drapery. It is very easy to forget that you are looking at stone and not fabric.

My take on the dispute? England acquired them legally and with the intention of preserving them, which no one in the Ottoman Empire (which Greece was a part of at the time) was prepared to do at that time. Yes, Greece was a conquered country but by the early 1800’s it had been ruled by the Ottomans for 350 years. The move by the Greek Government a few years ago to create a space for the Marbles in a Greek museum was one step too far and killed any hope for diplomatic negotiations to continue. I hope they remain in the British Museum permanently.