Holy British Museum, Batman!
Hello all! I hope this post finds you well. Caitlyn and I would like to dedicate today's blog post to the British Museum, one of our favorite London spots so far. You may be wondering why it happens to be a favorite, so we'll simply tell you. MUMMIES.
Yes, you read correctly. I said mummies.
Today Professor Ullinger took us to the British Museum where we viewed many exhibits, but were super excited to see the Rosetta Stone, Elgin Marbles, the Jericho Tomb and the Jabaliyya Mummy.
Rosetta Stone
Jabaliyya Mummy
After visiting these displays we then met up Professor Ullinger's good friend, Alma Adler who works at the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine, and then with Daniel Antoine, the curator for the British Museum's division of Ancient Egypt and Sudan for a behind-the-scenes tour! Little did Caitlyn and I know what we would see...
Since Daniel works mainly within Egypt and Sudan, what better way to introduce us to those areas than to show us an original piece of papyrus from the Book of the Dead depicting the story of the Weighing of the Heart. No joke! My mind is still having a hard time processing what we saw. If you're curious to know about the story, click on the link to learn more: Book of the Dead .
Daniel then proceeded to show us Ancient Egyptian jewelry, which was really intricate and beautiful (so colorful, too!). He had wanted to show us the real "bling" but unfortunately didn't have the proper key. We followed him through various doors, up and down stairs and through hallways I couldn't even have imagined existed.
To back track a little, upon our introduction to Daniel Caitlyn and I told him what our undergrad majors were and what we are planning to study in the Fall. Since Caitlyn is pursuing a career in Mathematics, Daniel grinned, then said he had something to show her later on.
When later on had come, boy oh boy did we see something spectacular! Daniel had pulled away a cloth draped over what is known as the Rhind Mathematical Papyrus (1575 B.C.). You may be thinking, 'Ok, so what?' What is so extraordinarily awesome about this piece of papyrus is that it documents math problems and solutions of building the pyramids in Egpyt, along with the first recorded us of Pi! (That last part is from Caitlyn's mouth, not mine. Remember people, I'm the Psych nerd.)
BUT, that was not the only awesome thing we witnessed today. We saw mummies. And when I say mummies, I mean lots and lots of mummies!
Answer: Because they keep things under wraps!
Funny? Not funny? You be the judge. Either way, I got to see some awesome mummies.
So, since I've been harbingering about mummies since the opening to this blog, I will tell you about the mummies we saw.
You'll notice above that I mentioned the Jabaliyya mummy. Well, the mummy that is on display in the museum is a male. We saw the female Jabaliyya mummy in the organic preservation room, which monitors the air quality to ensure nothing is damaged further. Like the male mummy, the female mummy was in a flexed position on her side (think fetal position) with her arms bent and hands just before her face. The female and male Jabaliyya mummies are from around 5,000 B.C. where bodies were preserved in small pits that were covered with hot sand. In order to learn more about both mummies, Daniel told us about some neat technology that can actually peel away layers of the body to understand more about the skeleton without having to compromise anything. That's how he learned that the male mummy was near the age of 18-21 when he died from a stab wound to the back, which is also believed to have affected a rib or two and most likely collapsed a lung. I'll tell ya', technology is simply amazing.
I don't think I was prepared to see what I'm about to tell you all, simply because I had never really thought it was done. But believe you me, Daniel showed us a preserved crocodile, which was believed to have been done to honor the Egyptian Crocodile God Sobek. Crazy stuff, right?!
We saw detailed tombs that mummies were kept in and learned why a lot of them had the image of eyes on them (it's to watch the outside world from inside their tomb). And finally, Daniel took us to a set of gigantic wooden doors, which held a room behind it with tons and tons of human remains from Sudan. He then showed us several Sudanese mummies from the Medieval Christian period that were in the process of being conserved without any chemicals (you go Daniel and crew!).
After giving many thanks to Daniel for showing us some private super-awesome-stuff, Professor Ullinger, Caitlyn and myself had a wonderful tea time at the museum. I had Garden Berry, Professor Ullinger had Early Gray and Caitlyn had English Breakfast. It was delicious, as were our scones and the jam and clotted cream spreads they gave us. Mmm, mmm good!
Take care everyone!
Lindsay
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