Sept. 15
The Greek sculpture in the British Museum is phenomenal. The museum has pieces from two of the Seven Wonders of the World—the Temple of Artemis at Ephesus and the Mausoleum at Halikarnassos.
The remains of the Temple of Artemis are just a few sculptural fragments. The Mausoleum is represented by friezes reconstructed on the museum walls and by monumental figures of people and horses.
It was the tomb of Mausolus. He was a Persian official, but the style of carving is decidedly Greek. According to Wikipedia, the work was done by Greek sculptors. He appears to have been a Hellenophile.
The wonder that really stopped me today, though, is called the Nereid Monument. It’s not one of the Seven Wonders, but may have been an inspiration for the Mausoleum.
The Nereids were daughters of a sea god. The room contains six of them. Three are on a reconstructed facade at one end of Room 17; three others are freestanding at the other end.
You can get close to them and look at the bodies moving vigorously, perhaps dancing, inside the clothes. And the garments flow and fold, creating graceful repeating waves.
It’s amazing what some people can do with stone.
The so-called Elgin marbles are still at the British Museum, even though the Greek government has insisted on getting them back.
They are named for Lord Elgin, who got a permit from the Turks to ship several sculptures from the Parthenon to England.
One of the first things you see when you enter the Classical section on the museum’s ground floor is the Rosetta Stone. It isn’t much to look at, but it’s outstanding mainly because it unlocked so much human knowledge.
I have seen it before, but today I noticed a small detail in the description.
The text is in traditional hieroglyphics, and then is repeated in the Egyptian vernacular of the time, and also in Greek. The translations allowed hieroglyphics to be deciphered for the first time.
The text describes a deal between Egyptian priests and a boy-king named Ptolemy V. The priests would establish a royal cult in return for concessions to the temples.
The decree was dated March 27, 196 B.C. So I did the math and learned that the decree (but probably not the stone) was issued 2141 years to the day before I was born.
Coincidence? I should think so.
Having immersed myself in Classical form and expression for an hour or so, I set off upstairs to see the work of my cousins—swords, armor, jewelry, and the like.
The Sutton Hoo ship burial is really amazing. Staring into that golden mask is a delightfully weird experience. There is a reconstruction in the same case that shows what it is supposed to have looked like originally.
All the craftsmanship in the artifacts and treasures show a high level of culture. Until the burial was excavated in 1939, it was generally assumed that all the descriptions of high culture in “Beowulf” were imaginary.
More weirdness is in the Lindow Man. This is the body of a man who was executed, murdered, or just had a lot of bad luck all at once.
He has holes in his skull from strikes, a wound in the neck, a garotte (or maybe just a tight necklace) around his throat. He died of a broken neck.
Most of the bones disintegrated (or whatever bones do when they rot away), but because the Lindow Man was buried, or discarded, in a peat bog, acidity and other chemical conditions turned his soft tissue into leather.
The skin of one of his legs and feet has been preserved, but the bone appears to have disappeared. His arms, chest, and face are intact. Some of his skull, showing the holes, remains.
Since his disinterment, he has been preserved through modern means and lies in a sealed case in a dark corner of Room 50. As one of the museum guards explained, “He is light-sensitive.”
I left the museum around 4 and realized that I hadn’t eaten any solid food all day. I stopped in a pub called the Queen’s Larder, but was told they only serve food from noon till 3.
I read that the place got its name because at or near that site, Queen Charlotte stored the food that she personally fed to Mad King George while he was hospitalized in the neighborhood. It’s only a short walk from the President Hotel.
The Swan Holborn is half a block away from the Queen’s Larder, so I went there for a steak and ale pie. I took it with a half-pint of Hop Stuff, a cask pale ale, which was bitter enough and very drinkable, and with a half of another pale, which unlike the Hop Stuff was not a cask ale, and so had sharper carbonation.
After the Swan, I was back at the hotel for a breather, when I wrote most of this recap.
I stopped at the Friend at Hand, but left after one beer. It was just too crowded.
I had a few more at the bars in the hotel. Banks’s bitter has that nutty flavor I associate with ESB.
I had had it before, because it is the only ale at the Atrium bar in the President Hotel. The rest of the taps are lagers.
For variety, I went to the Night and Day in the Imperial Hotel. The hotels are owned by the same company, and you can walk from lobby to lobby.
So this is Harry enjoying London.
And signing off for now.
Be well, all.
Harry
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