I was supposed to be visiting the Science Museum today to see their science fiction exhibition. I’d deliberately left the booking of my ticket for this and the train until yesterday as I didn’t want to be going up if it was bucketing it down as I was intending to walk from the station to the museum and there is nothing worse than trudging round a museum soaking wet. While this seemed like a great plan it seemed less so when I logged on to the science museum site only to find that there weren’t any tickets available. This is almost certainly because it is currently half term and with a desire to keep their offspring occupied a trip to the Science Museum seems like a plan.
All this required a rethink on my part. The more astute amongst my readers will have worked out that I elected to go to the British Museum instead. They had an exhibition on I was interested in seeing and there were tickets available. Not once did it cross my mind that parents would also choose to take their kids there too. This will become important later. I booked both the ticket for the exhibition and the free timed entrance ticket and thought no more of it.
“Tickets Please!” said nobody
It’s a 50 minute walk from Paddington to Great Russell Street something that would normally be fairly straightforward but I had elected to wear my very sharp looking brand new trainers. Turns out that they were also very sharp on my heels too and so by the time I arrived I was hobbling. Oh and the weather was glorious.
What was less than glorious were the long queues outside of people waiting to get in. This was due to a less than rigorous bag check to ensure that we weren’t carrying any concealed cans of tomato soup in our bags. What they weren’t checking was whether we actually had a general entrance booking that I had dutifly made as request by the British Museum website. I am sure that I would have had the place to myself had they bothered to check but instead it was heaving with the great unticketed masses and their children. I retreated in to the exhibition.
Hieroglyphs unlocking ancient Egypt
“Hieroglyphs unlocking ancient Egypt” looked at the race to understand the languages of ancient Egypt with the Rosetta Stone at its centre. This slab of stone with the same passage written in three languages eventually provided the key to unlocking the translation of Egyption hieroglyphs. The story of the men who raced each other to work out the key was told through a number of artifacts each displaying some fine work that someone a few thousand years ago must have spent weeks carefully carving. Ultimately the exhibition was interesting but too busy to get near most of what was there.
And the Rest of it
There is no denying that the British Museum is a beautiful place, especially as you stand inside looking up at the marvellous roof. It is also filled with some amazing pieces but there’s not anything very British about its content as the chart below shows.
The most controversial pieces must by the ‘Elgin marbles‘ or, more accurately the Parthenon Sculptures. They are beautiful pieces of works but they really ought to be in Greece.
I understand why there is a reluctance by the museum to not return the marbles to their rightful home because as soon as they do other countries will come knocking on their door asking for their antiquities back and before you know it the place would be empty. But… they really would look much better in Athens but that’s just my view.
I look forward to returning back to the museum on a day when it’s not half term and I am not wearing new trainers as there is so much more for me to explore there.