I went to go and see the Treasures Exhibit at the Royal British Columbia Museum today! Basically they brought in some of the worlds greatest treasures from the British Museum and put them on display it was absolutely AMAZING! As you walk in it starts with 'Becoming Human' which just mentions how the first humans were able to distinguish themselves because they had the ability to make crude tools to help their survival unlike other species. Then it moves into the Africa display which has handaxes which were some of the first tools made by humans, and then it goes into my favorite part, Egypt! They had a 3000 year old mummy and the sarcophagus as well!! It was soo amazing to see! It's hard to believe that the Egyptians had the technology to preserve their dead so well! And it's also really amazing to see the care that was taken for their dead, it takes 15 days to wrap a dead body in linens! They were so precise with the steps that had to be taken to help protect the souls of their dead in the afterlife. Anyways, there was also a casting of the Rosetta Stone which is inscribed in three different langues, Heiroglyphics, Greek and Demotic (which I've personally never heard of) all the writing was sooo small, I couldn't believe it, it must have taken ages to chip it into the stone! So from Egypt you walk into the kingoms of West and Central Africa, there was a lot of really neat sculpture type things. Then it's off to the Middle East! Now the Middle East is where writing originated over 5000 years ago!! Also, there was lots of religious art created at this time, however artists weren't allowed to depict people as they really were because that would imply that they were similar to Allah who created man. And they have these really neat cylinder seals that had a hole through the middle so that you could put a string through it and wear it on you, and basically its like a rolling stamp they were super neat. Also there were really large lamps that were among the first to hang in Cairo's early mosques, oil lamps of course. There was also a headdress from a royal cemetary made with gold, it was so intricate, it was very beautiful! So from there you move along to Europe and there was LOTS to see in this area, lots of jewllery and sheilds, carvings from ancient Greece and Rome lots of sculputures and there was lots of currencies from that time. Also, there were artifacts from Medeival Europe as well as the Age of Enlightenment. There were tons of paintings from this time, they were amazing! And of course, most famously, The Lewis Chessmen ( I want a set soooo bad even though I hate chess, but the set is like $400...ouch). They are so cool, they were made from walrus tusks for about 300 years until elephant tusks became readily available and for some of the pawns they were able to use whale teeth if they needed. The chess pieces are really odd looking but still really amazing, and I have to say that I much prefer chess pieces in white and red rather than white and black. After Europe you go over to Asia and theres lots of Chinese jade and bronze creations (for lack of a better word!) There were these really amazing screens, there were two and they were both 8 panels long and they depicted the Tsushima River Festival, so lots of boats and paper lanterns things like that :) and then we moved into Japan and there was a really huge standing Buddha made of wood and that was really cool to see. And then at this point someone came on the loudspeaker saying that the museum was closing in 15 mins, so I was NOT happy about that because we staill had 3 sections to get through, so we had to skip the Enlightenment Center which was all the hands on fun stuff...which I was looking forward to so we quickly had a look about and then sped through the rest of the exhibit which contained the Ocenaia section Which had pictures from Easter Island and some wood and shell artifacts and had some info about the Oceanic island cultures and the traditions and trade networks that they shared. After that came the Americas which there wasn't a whole lot of stuff on (go figure eh?) but still there was a gold mask and helmet of Columbia and then the last bit of the exhibit was the Modern World which has one of the neatest artefacts which would be the Throne of Weapons from Mozambique which is a chair made of guns and its all rusted, but it's so crazy to see a chair made completely of weapons! So that was the end of the exhibit and then there was the giftshop and i couldnt aford a single thing lol it was kind of funny, but yea overall it was really amazing, it made me think of how much fun it will be to see the British Museum which apparently has over like 50 000 paintings in it! CAN'T WAIT!!!!
cheers!!
- Holly
P.S. Only 48 more days to Europe!!
No comments:
Post a Comment