10/5: British Museum's Amazing Assyria & Greek Galleries!

Earlier on a fall day last October Steven and I had been enamored with the Egyptian mummies at the world-famous British Museum in London. Having explored one ancient civilization, we were ready to begin to discover another, that of ancient Assyria, now present-day Iraq, as it had been home to other palace-building rulers. People visiting the museum's valuable Assyrian collection are so fortunate to view the priceless artifacts since the recent destruction of ancient sites by ISIS militants has meant there are few to see in situ. Assyria was considered to be the lion or 'king of beasts' in early Middle Eastern civilizations and also called 'the Romans of the East' for their road building and express mail service!

Standing guard over the Assyria gallery was the Colossal Guardian Lion which dated from about 865-860 BC and came from the Temple of Ishtar in Nimrud, Assyria. The fierce 15-ton lion symbolized Ishtar the Assyrian goddess of war and guarded the entrance to her temple.

This remarkable pair of Two-Headed Winged Lions guarded an 11th-8th century BC Assyrian palace and protected the king from evil spirits. It's hard to see from the photo but the scary animal had five legs so it could guard both directions at once. I hope Steven and I will remember to look for a similar pair of winged lions the next time we visit the Metropolitan Museum in New York.

Etched into the stone was cuneiform script, the world's first written language that was invented by southern Iraq's Sumerians over 5,000 years ago and then passed down to the Assyrians.

We then entered a long, narrow gallery lined with stone relief panels that was a miniature version of the throne room and royal apartments of the 9th century BC King Ashurnasirpal II's Northwest Palace at Nimrud. Built atop a 50-acre mound, the palace was 30,000 square feet in size.

In the first panel was the fez-like crown-wearing Ashurnasirpal himself flanked by his supernatural eagle-headed henchmen who were sprinkling incense on him with pine cones. Under his reign, the Assyrians dominated the region from their capital near modern day Mosul.

This Eagle-Headed Protective Spirit came from the palace.

Also in the amazing gallery were battle scene panels which depicted Assyria at war. One, called Attack on an an Enemy Town, showed the king, protected by a shield-bearer, shooting arrows from a safe distance. In front, a wheeled siege-engine, according to the description, and which looked all the world like a modern tank, carried more archers. Inside the 'tank, a lever worked to batter the walls.

In another panel, called Enemy Escape, enemy soldiers were shown attempting to flee Assyrians by swimming across the Euphrates River using inflated animal bladders as life preservers!

The Assyrian king, shaded by a parasol in Review of Prisoners, is seen watching the prisoners parade before him. Above the prisoners' heads are the spoils of war, their booty as the Assyrian economy depended on it. Though the Assyrians had a ruthless reputation for depopulating conquered lands and then moving in their own settlers, their legacy was as builders and not as destroyers.

I hope you still haven't seen too much of the phenomenal Assyrian collection because we were enthralled there was still more to see. We learned in the exhibit called Royal Lion Hunts that lion hunting in Assyria was the sport of kings. As lions lived in the region until the modern era, it was the king's responsibility to keep the lion population down to assist farmers and herders. The duty soon morphed into sport with staged hunts and zoo-bred lions as the kings asserted their power by taking on the king of beasts.

These sculptures were carved about 645-635 BC and showed the sporting exploits of the last great Assyrian king, Ashurbanipal,  who reigned for 50 years. The hunt scenes have been described as ranking among the finest achievements in Assyrian art. After the king's men released lions from their cages, horseback riders herded them into arenas where the king cornered them.

In Dying Lioness, I could almost feel the lioness' pain and agony trying to escape after being struck by arrows. I read that Assyria's once great nation was downed just like the brave lions. Soon after Ashurbanipal's death, his homeland was conquered and its capital was sacked and looted by a rising Babylon in 612 BC.

We then headed to the Greek Gallery where the history of ancient Greece spanned from 600 BC-1 AD. When Assyria was controlling the Mideast, the area now known as Greece was only warring tribes and "floundering in darkness." During the Greek Golden Age from just 500-430 BC, its people set the stage for Western civilization to come in terms of democracy, theater, literature, the sciences, art and architecture!

Sixth century Athens produced the finest black-figured vases ever made. The figures were shown in black silhouette against the clay's natural color with details cut through the black surface with a sharp engraving tool. Greeks poured wine from jugs like this one from 540 BC which was painted with a legend from the Trojan War.

Greek pottery had many different uses: at banquets, in religious celebrations, for cooking and storage, and for offerings to the gods and the dead. Athens was the leading producer of decorated pottery in Greece from around 580-300 BC.

In the Kouros or the Torso of an Idealized Youth from 520 BC, we could see how the Greeks viewed their gods in human form and that humans were godlike. They devised a statue type of a youth or kouros as an idealized body, with the ideal man being geometrically perfect. In the statue, that meant finding balance between movement and stillness, and between realistic human anatomy and the perfection of a Greek god.

I know our son-in-law, Will, would love to have seen this Red-Figured Wine Cooler from 490 BC as he's a wine enthusiast and entrepreneur! The half-man, half-animal satyrs were depicted at a symposium or drinking party! Look how far more natural their movements are compared to the kouros above.

Greek temples like this reconstructed Nereid Monument of a temple-shaped tomb from circa 390 BC was the home of a statue or goddess. Greek temples were gods' homes unlike Christian churches which serve as meeting places. As worshippers gathered outside, the exterior was the most important part of the temple. 

The triangular space above the columns was called the pediment and was filled with sculptures.

The statues between the columns were friendly sea nymphs or nereids, attired in windblown clothes looking like they might be borne aloft at any moment!

The museum's Parthenon Galleries contained the famous Elgin Marbles named for the early 19th century British ambassador who had his staff remove panels from the temple dedicated to Athena, the goddess of wisdom and the city's patroness. Having been at the Athens' museum, Steven and I clearly understood  the Greek government's position that Britain 'stole' some of the Parthenon's and its country's best sculptures. The British still maintain, however, they 'rescued' and 'preserved' them. I was far more inclined to feel the Elgin Marbles should be returned to Greece and that Britain no longer has the right to them if they ever did. 

The exquisite marble panels that lined the immense hall were a large part of the frieze that circled the exterior of the Parthenon.

We marveled at the folds of the clothes on the female figures. I read that sculptors first built a nude model of their figure, add real clothes to it, and then studied how the clothes draped before beginning to sculpt in marble.

Look at the centaur grabbing the man by the throat while his hair is being pulled. At the same time, the man is attempting to fend off the centaur with his knee. In the next scene, the centaur is pulling the hair and the man is falling to his knees.

Getting back to where the Elgin Marbles should 'properly' be located, to put things in context the 18th century British considered themselves as the new 'civilized' race and subduing the 'barbarians' in their far-flung empire. However, in my opinion, that period has come and gone and the marbles should also be gone from England.

If your eyes aren't ready to glaze over already, take a moment to enjoy some of the architecture from the Persian Empire as the museum had more than what now can be seen in Iran. Steven was lucky enough to live in Tehran for two years from 1975-1977 while teaching at an American school and he therefore toured much of that nation. If and when it's safe to travel to Iran someday, we hope to visit the country together. 

These stone carvings and glazed bricks were from Persian palaces at Persepolis and other sites in modern Iran. These palaces had large columned halls decorated with scenes carved in stone or glazed brick. 

It was hard to realize but Steven and I had only covered the foundations of Western civilization on one floor of just one wing of arguably the world's best museum in a matter of four or five hours our first afternoon in London last fall. It would have taken many more days to fully immerse ourselves in artifacts from other ancient lands. Perhaps some day we'll be able to. 

Next post: Walking through the Westminster area of London.

I have also just finished writing a post about a far more recent trip, the one we took just to Sri Lanka and a small part of southern India this past March before we needed to come home because of the pandemic. Here's a link to my post on our train trip from the ancient city of Anuradhapura south toward Gompaha, near the capital: 

https://bergersadventures8.blogspot.com/2020/06/312-traveling-by-train-to-gompaha-in.html

Posted at long last on June 24th, 2020, from Portland, Oregon as we take a mini road trip to the Northwest on our way home after visiting our darling granddaughter in San Francisco for the first time. 

10/5: London's Abbey Road & British Museum's Mummies!

 After spending four weeks in Ireland and about ten days exploring parts of Wales and Scotland, Steven and I flew down to London for the last four days of our trip. Since the iconic Abbey Road of The Beatles' fame was near the apartment we'd rented, we walked to the famous crosswalk. Here were the EMI Studios that The Beatles recorded some of their famous tunes long ago.

The Queen's Coronation was recorded at the studios via landline from Westminster Abbey. The first stereo record was released in 1955 at the studios.

As you might imagine, the intersection was pretty crammed with Beatles' fans from all over the world, ourselves included, hoping for a break in the traffic to allow for a shot in the crosswalk. I'd have hated to live nearby and have to drive along that section of Abbey Road on a regular basis because of everyone wanting to imitate walking across the road as The Beatles did.

I remember having to wait a good while so Steven could take this photo of me in the crosswalk!

If you want to tag along while Steven and I followed the rise and fall of three great civilizations - Egypt, Assyria or ancient Iraq, and Greece at the British Museum, this and the next post are definitely for you! If not, join me in two posts when we perused more of London. As the museum had been described as the chronicle of Western civilization, it was important for us to spend our first afternoon there. To provide some context, the British Union Jack flew over a quarter of the world in the 19th century and London was the capital of the empire. England amassed art as quickly as it did colonies and the British Museum was its repository!

The entrance led to the glass-domed Great Court, Europe's largest covered square, bigger even than a a football field. In the center was the round Reading Room which used to be a study hall for authors including Rudyard Kipling, Oscar Wilde, W. B. Yeats, Virginia Woolf, T. S. Eliot and Mark Twain. Karl Marx wrote Das Kapital there after formulating his ideas on communism.

We started with the Egyptian Gallery after learning that Egypt was considered to have one of the world's first civilizations because its people had a government, religion, a written language and art. When we think of that nation, mummies, pharaohs, and pyramids come to mind right away. That period of their history lasted from 3000-1000 BC, two thousand years with barely any change in their government, religion, or arts.

The Museum had a huge, huge number of objects in just the Egyptian Gallery which would have been overwhelming if we'd attempted to take in everything. Instead, we chose to spend our limited time on about a dozen that caught our fancy and examine those in depth. What follows is my appreciation of some of the highlights in the gallery.

Our first image in the gallery was of the Rosetta Stone which, upon its discovery in the Egyptian desert in 1799, caused a huge stir in Europe because it meant Egyptian writing could be deciphered for the first time. The only surviving fragment of a larger stone slab recorded a decree in 196 BC in hieroglyphics, Demotic, the everyday script of literate Egyptians and also Greek. By comparing the two known languages with the unknown one, linguists could translate the hieroglyphics!

The seven-ton statue of King Ramses II was made of two different colors of granite and showed the man who ruled for 66 years from about 1290-1223 BC with the traditional features of a pharaoh.

The Statue of Roy, a well-known high priest of Amun-Ra in Thebes, was depicted with a long pleated robe that was fashionable in Ramses' era.

In Ram Sphinx of King Taharqo, the supreme god Amun was represented as a ram. The ruler's forehead sported two cobras instead of one, an assertion of sovereignty over both his native Kush and Egypt which the Kushites had conquered.

The immense Sarcophagus of Nectanebo II was prepared for the country's last pharaoh when his reign was cut short in 343 BC when Egypt was restored to Persian rule. In the medieval ages, the sarcophagus was used as a ritual bath in the Attarin Mosque in Alexandria. The text on the outside described the sun god's nightly journey through the netherworld.

The Palm-Leaf Columns of Ramses II were from a 19th dynasty temple dedicated to a ram god wearing his typical feather crown and a kilt, not in his usual mummy form. Vertical texts displayed cartouches with Ramses' throne and birth names.

The Colossal Scarab from 332 BC was one of the largest representations of scarab beetles to survive and also ranked among the last great statues of any pharaonic deity. It represented Khepri, the form assumed by the sun god at dawn. The Egyptians noticed scarabs hatched from buried dung balls as if by self-creation. In the same way, the sun god was also believed to be self-creating, renewing his powers each night before his rebirth at daybreak. Each sunrise was a repetition of the god's first appearance at the dawn of time as the creator god Atum. The hieroglyph for scarab translated  as "to come into being." The beetle's symbol was worn by pharaohs and placed on mummies' chests to protect the spirit's heart from impulsive actions.

Never before had Steven and I heard of or seen a Female Sphinx so we were curious when we came across this statue from the 2nd century AD. In Greek mythology, a sphinx was a monster with a female head, a bird's wings, the body of a lion, and often a serpent's tail. However in ancient Egypt, sphinxes were symbols of royal power. This Greek sphinx may have once guarded a Greek resident in Egypt.

Though cats were kept as pets in ancient Egypt, gods also appeared in the form of cats. This bronze figure, known as the Gayer-Anderson Cat, came from a temple and probably represented one form of the goddess Bastet. It was amazing to read that every year about 700,000 people journeyed to Bubastis in northern Egypt for a festival in Bastet's honor according to Herodotus, the Greek historian.

Thousands of bronze figures of various sized and forms of gods were dedicated in temples throughout Egypt. The statues' donors had hoped to communicated withe gods. Only the king or someone very wealthy could have afforded to commission an example as fine as this cat that was adorned with precious metals. the scarab beetle on the cat's head symbolized rebirth.

In Nebamun Hunting in the Marshes, he is shown in a small boat with his wife Hatshepsut and their young daughter in the Nile's marshes. Fertile marshes were a place of rebirth and eroticism which made this more than a simple scene of recreation. Hunting not only supplied food but represented Nebamun's triumph over the force of chaos.

It was neat seeing how the fish, birds and plants were so realistically portrayed in the painting. Note the papyrus bush on the left as the first 'paper' came from them.

Nebamun's Garden of the West depicted the afterlife which was like the earthly gardens of wealthy ancient Egyptians. The pool was full of birds and fish, surrounded by borders of flowers and rows of fruit trees.

It was enlightening to read about the construction of coffins, the majority of which were hollow shells built up over a disposable core using a variety of materials during the Ptolemaic and early Roman periods. A coating of plaster applied to the cases' exterior and sometimes their interior, served as a base for the decoration in paint and gold leaf.

Mummifying bodies involved first disemboweling apart for the heart, then filling and drying the cavities before carefully covering the body from head to toe with linen cloth strips. The internal organs were preserved in jars and placed with the body. Magic spells from the Book of the Dead were written in hieroglyphics on the coffins and on the tomb walls. Also included were notes for the waking soul who required them to get beyond the guardians of eternity.

The Portrait of Artemidorus was painted in three-quarter profile as if he was turned to face those watching. His hair was brushed forward in the 2nd century AD style of Trajan. As most surviving portraits were separated from their mummies when they were discovered, it's difficult to know whether the portrait was a true likeness or just an idealized image which reflected a general notion of the deceased's age and social status. 

Gebelein Man was buried 5,400 years ago, a full thousand years prior to the pyramids, in the fetal position so he could 'sleep' for all of eternity. He was found with bowls, beads, and a flint blade. He was referred to as Ginger by scientists because of his tufts of red hair and which made him look so lifelike.

In addition to the people mummies, we also saw animal mummies as cats were popular pets and considered incantations of the cat-headed goddess Bastet.

I can't remember as it was so long ago now but we must have wandered into another room off the Ancient Egyptian Wing because we then came across some spectacular mosaics found throughout the Roman Empire. They provided public buildings and private homes with rich and colorful decorations. Most mosaics were made of small cubes of stone, glass and other materials, laid closely together in patterns. Mosaic pavements originated in Greece during the 3rd century BC although mosaics made of colored pebbles were made centuries earlier. 

The British Museum only had the red-granite Head and Arm of a Statue of Amenhotep III as the rest of his body was still back in Egypt! With just the head circa 1370 BC, though, we still had the sense of an omnipotent ruler who would stand for nothing short of absolute obedience. Appropriately, the long arm of the law was represented by the pharaoh's fist!

The Four Figures of the Goddess Sekhmet dated from 1360 BC. Sekhmet was a lion goddess whose name meant 'the mighty one.' A myth recounted how she almost obliterated humankind for conspiring against her father's rule. Though she was associated with destruction and plague, her powers could also be invoked for healing. 

Sekhmet was holding an ankh, a key-shaped cross that was the hieroglyph for 'life' and was a symbol for eternal life. 

Painted statues such as the Statue of Nenkhefta from 2400 BC represented the soul of the deceased. To keep alive the personality of the deceased person, such an image would have greeted Nenheftka's family when food offerings were brought to feed his soul.  Ancient Egyptians believed that one's soul lived on after death and that your possessions could be taken with you to the afterlife.

The statue of King Amenhotep III as a Lion declared the king's might by representing him as a lion. Though pharaohs were often shown as a sphinx with the body of a lion, the full lion image was very rare. A later inscription added on the chest called the king 'a lion of rulers.'

The sheer magnificence of just the artifacts we dove into in the Ancient Egypt wing of the British Museum made me feel like we had done the gallery 'justice.' Steven and I always like knowing we can leave a country, a city and yes, even a museum, with a sense there's more to see if and when we can and choose to return. With a museum as vast as the British Museum, we could easily return some day and be equally enchanted with other objects in the Ancient Egypt gallery. 

Next post: Our continued visit at the British Museum beginning with Ancient Assyria, the land now known as Iraq.

In between finishing the posts on our trip to London, I have been writing on our far more recent trip to Sri Lanka and southern India this March before the virus caused us to come home early. My most recent post to the island nation's ancient cities centered on our visit to the UNESCO site at Anuradhapura, once the site of the largest stupa in the world and the world's oldest tree:
https://bergersadventures8.blogspot.com/2020/06/311-anuradhapura-unesco-sights-worlds.html

Posted on June 16th, 2020, from San Francisco where we're lucky enough to be visiting two of our children and our first grandchild! Please be safe and take care of yourself and those you love.