Photo album Day 10!
https://photos.app.goo.gl/PYDeb6Wknc8JKfAWA
Early post for an early evening, I suppose. I’ll be leaving my hotel about 5:30 in the morning to catch the first train to Heathrow, so I wanted to get this down before I fell asleep at like 9pm.
Today I finally managed to make it to the British Museum. I ended up not grabbing breakfast at the hotel – the pre-packaged yogurt really didn’t call to me this morning – and opted for another hour’s sleep instead. I made it to the BM about 10:30 and queued up for Intense Bag Check inside a huge white semi-permanent tent, and got into the museum itself about 20 minutes later. The folks in line around me were rather miffed, since it “hadn’t been this bad last time” they’d come through, but I figure it has something to do with the rehoming movements picking up speed again.
See, the British Way of acquiring pieces for their museums is, in a word, questionable, at best. Many of the displays mentioned “purchased by/for” and a date, which begs the questions “who paid whom,” “payment vs worth,” “understood value,” and “did money/goods/services actually change hands for this, or is this an outright lie?”
There is a second, underlying layer for these questions, too. Say for the sake of argument the Brits legitimately paid someone something for the item in question. Did that seller actually have the right to sell the piece, or did they just find it lying around somewhere? Did that seller get permission from the original culture to sell it? And so forth.
And yet, beside that is the question of preservation. The pieces inside the museum are in wonderful condition. You can read every letter on the Rosetta Stone. The hieroglyphs on many of the Egyptian carvings are untouched by wind and sand for centuries, as compared to pieces that remain in the world. Wooden sarcophagi are still unbroken and unrotted in their cases. They take special care of the Gebelein Man, and even have a plaque educating visitors that the special instrument they see is an alarmed temperature gauge that rechecks his case every fifteen minutes.
I honestly don’t know where I stand on the rehoming debate. Displays like the Sutton Hoo burial (which was everything I dreamed, bee tee dubs) are best left there because, well, they’re British, or were found on British soil.
Yet I couldn’t take pictures in the mummy halls, not of anything that reeked of death. I stayed long enough to get a feel for the place – a feel that I didn’t like – and then slipped out. I thought, having grown up steeped in various mythologies and somewhat obsessed over Egyptian culture, that I’d love it. Don’t get me wrong, I was fascinated by the process and the items and the sarcophagi in such glorious condition after thousands of years.
But all the death hanging over the place, people gawking at dead bodies, pushing and shoving to get good pictures of the Gebelein display and Cleopatra’s still-wrapped corpse — it broke my heart. I felt the hurt and discomfort of the dead, was surrounded by it, and couldn’t participate in that circus anymore. I took lunch in the [expensive] restaurant and then left soon after.
It was one thing to see the carvings and stonework of the Egyptians, see how massive and impressive they still were. But the dead deserve their homes, deserve to return to the shrines of their people, even if it means letting them decay into dust. Study them, learn the process and history of them if you must, but put them back. Eternity is too long to be spent being gawked over, outside of their box of protection painted with memories of their past and family. Put them back, and let them be.
At the very least, I’m glad I waited until today. While I don’t want to carry that feeling with me home, better that than throughout the week of being here and having it color the rest of my experiences.
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I left the British Museum, not willing to fight through the crowds again to see Sutton Hoo and wash myself clean of those icky vibes only to leave them there and defile a good place. Instead, I headed toward the Hard Rock Cafe, where a friend had requested that I pick her up a trinket. I accidentally took the wrong bus, but figured it out pretty quick and made it there without further incident. The shop was crowded, so I didn’t stay long at all – just enough to pick out her thing and grab a shot glass for my cabinet.
Come to find out, the Hard Rock is just outside of Hyde Park, which, while huge, is just south of my hotel. Still feeling super icky, I decided to walk the park on the way back.
By huge, I do mean this place is Rather Large Indeed. I cut across the middle and followed the lake around the west bank near the Princess Diana fountains. I figure it was about a 2 mile walk, though I took it slow and stopped often for pictures and Pokemon alike. Too, I spent a good twenty minutes just lying in the grass. The sun was high and warm, the ground cool, and I’d managed to find a spot that didn’t stink too much of flowers or rubbish – and luckiest of all, I couldn’t hear anyone around. There were people all over, of course, and some had taken up residence in the next patch over the nearest walkway, but I had found a little cocoon of silence, and it was worth it. The water smelled nice, and was surprisingly clear for a lake in the heart of a city, though it could’ve been through the efforts of all the waterfowl. I resisted the urge to pick up an ice cream at the Rolls Royce Rolling Ice Cream Car because I’m running low on cash and want ice cream with supper again instead, but it was still a cute concept, and a nice car, to boot.
I don’t have the mental capacity to write a wrap-up at the moment. It’s my last night in London, and I’m off for supper and last-minute shopping in a minute, but I’ll wait until I get home and have a few days to recover before I start up again. It’s been a lovely trip, but it’s time to go home and cuddle my cats and kiss my husband and get in my bed and actually wake from sleep without pain for the first time in two weeks. I do thank all the gods, though, that my body has held up this long. I’m not looking forward to a ten hour plane ride tomorrow, but if it means I get my bed at the end of it, I’ll tough it out. At least the airline has offered me a wheelchair on both ends of the flight, which will definitely help. Just walking vs packhorsing and flying are two totally different experiences, and I wish I’d learned that before my flight here.
I hope you’ve had as good a time following my adventures as I’ve had in having them! You’re welcome to leave notes in the comments section, if you’d like, or on Facebook, for those following there. Until the wrap-up!
May all your travels (near or far) be lovely and gentle, your food good and wholesome, and your beds comfortable and warm.
The Crafty Medievalist 