The British Museum

The British Museum is located in the Bloomsbury area of London and is dedicated to the documentation of human history and culture from its beginnings to current day. I found it interesting that the British Museum was the first national public museum and opened in 1759, well before the United States became a country.

I saw many different exhibits and types of artifacts while at the museum: Jewelry, pottery, small figurines, metalwork, weapons, human bones, animal bones, literature, paintings, hieroglyphics, fossils, rocks, statues, busts, random trinkets, many items I don’t even know the name or purpose of, and tons of other things I can’t remember.  The age of the artifacts varied between the different exhibits. Within the exhibits the ages still varied but to a lesser extent than between the exhibits. While I enjoyed the many different artifacts, the ones I enjoyed most were the fossils, jewelry, and the items in the Ancient Egypt exhibition.

The fossils were in the enlightenment gallery and there was an entire dedicated section to fossils, rocks, and minerals. There were so many incredible specimens. Bones from giant animals and what I think was a large piece of petrified wood. There were lots of big fossils and multiple shells cut in half so you could see what it looked like on the inside. One spiral seashell was half my size. I also saw many small fossils which are common, but the fossil to rock ratio heavily leaned toward the fossils. There was only a little bit of rock holding a huge number of small fossils together, instead of only a small number of fossils in a lot of rock, like I am used to seeing.

So. Much. Jewelry. I think there was at least some jewelry from each culture. Some exhibits had more jewelry than others. It made me wonder, was the difference in the amount of jewelry because of cultural differences or because some are older than others or maybe a combination of both.  I noticed that there were lots of necklaces, bracelets, earrings, rings, and some broaches. Most jewelry was made of various metals but there were some beads made from wood and I think I saw a few rings made from bone. While there were a lot of gemstones set in the pieces of jewelry, there were just as many precious stones used.

I have always enjoyed learning about ancient Egypt so the Egyptian gallery was a must see. When I finally found the Egyptian gallery I started looking around and reading about all the artifacts. I was most interested in the funeral and mummification processes. I liked reading about how they would remove a person’s internal organs and place them into separate jars to be preserved. They talked about removing the brain through the nose cavity and how the bodies would be buried in salt and left to dehydrate for 40 days. Various oils and resins would be put on the body and then finally wrapped in bandages. Once the mummification process was finished the mummy would be put in either a tomb or a grave and surrounded with their belongings and several other items to help them get to the underworld including mummified animals and small figurines called shabits. They had a few mummies and sarcophagus. They also had many table slabs with hieroglyphics on them.

I really enjoyed looking at everything and I definitely want to go back and visit all the things I didn’t get a chance to see. I would also like to bring my family to the museum so we could look around together and discuss what they liked and just have a good time. I wanted to learn more about the British museum, so I looked online and found their website. The website was really cool and easy to use, most of the exhibits even have a virtual tour option where you can go into the museum and walk around similarly to google maps street view.