Landed at Heathrow and then took the Tube (Mind the
Gap, please!) into Central London. I got off at the South Kensington station.
This turned out to be a mistake, and I was a little disoriented for
awhile because I knew my hotel was suppose to be right near the Tube station, but when I
looked at the address the numbers were nowhere close. So I went wheeling my heavy luggage for a
very long walk and while I got to see the beautiful architecture of the Natural
History Museum, I started to get a bit worried that I was completely lost. After walking past Baden Powell’s statue, I
finally reached my hotel and then I realized that I should have gotten off at
the Gloucester Road station, rather than South Kensington (which was the station for the
conference site) Oh well…
...After
practicing my talk (which I had to give the next day and I hadn’t really had time to work on much with all
that needed doing before I left) and falling accidentally falling asleep for about 10
minutes, I tried to get oriented to the city via internet, only to find that my hotel
wireless was next to useless. Not wanting to waste any more time, I
just used the foldout map that a nice London 2012 (Olympics/Paralympics) lady had handed me in the
airport. Not very convenient, but it did
have everything I needed. (Later on, I
had a nice travel book with maps that was part of the conference
packet. That was the best thing to
use.)
So by now its about 3 pm and I am
ready for a” little” tour of the city. My brother had suggested I use the Tube to get up to the British Museum, and I
am glad that I took his suggestion. I
strongly recommend using the tube to cover ground to the outermost destination and
walking between nearby points back towards the hotel. (And if one gets too tired, just hopping the nearest tube and getting back.)
The British Museum.
I
think my overwhelming reaction to the British Museum is that at its heyday, the British
Empire clearly had collected much of the treasures of the ancient world. I am sure that when they were taken from their original sites, it was
not thought of so much as plunder but as bringing the ancient world back to the
modern for study. Still, one can’t help but feel a bit like the British Empire was
intentionally cannabilizing all the worlds former greater empires to increase its own sense
of destiny and power. 
The one and only Rosetta stone.
(glad I recently read Breaking the Mayan Code, it gives some nice insight to
why Egyptian was cracked earlier than Mayan.)
Speaking of Mayan codices and stellas, guess who managed to collect/plunder some of the major ones....
Back to Egyptian plunder...
Speaking of Mayan codices and stellas, guess who managed to collect/plunder some of the major ones....
Back to Egyptian plunder...
But lest you think it was only Egypt that was plundered, be assured that ancient Greece was as well...
Whether shocking in terms of the sheer size of plunder or amazing in terms of seeing (and sometimes touching) these ancient artifacts, one has to be impressed.
One of the more interesting displays to me was the Lion hunt murals from Assyria. This was this a massive wall displaying the prowess of the Assyrian king at killing lions released in the arena.
There was also a small display of the theaters tokens used for Shakespeare's Globe Theater. Apparently, by the end, Shakes was one of the wealthiest men in London. Stopped by the reconstructed Globe Theatre later on in my trip.
One of the themes in the British Museum was the History of the World in 100 artifacts, which again given the extent of plunder of the treasures of the ancient world was not really much of an exaggeration.
