From Mummies to Mayhem

Checked out of the hotel and off to the British Museum. We had time for a cup of coffee/tea in the Great Hall before we met up with Richard Woff, of the Education Dept. of the BM at 10am. For the next 2 ½ hours we speed raced through the highlights of the Museum – Sutton Hoo hoard, Rosetta Stone, Elgin Marbles, turquoise double-headed serpent (Aztec), a gold cape from ancient Wales – I cannot begin to recall and describe the treasures within.

But the real treat for all of us was when we were taken into the bowels of the BM (Tracy made me put that in – but it’s actually accurate!). There are 100,000 estimated objects in storage in the Egyptian collection, and we went through all of the stacks. I was in heaven!!!

John Taylor allowed us to rummage about and we saw mummies on racks to the ceiling, stelae, canopic jars, chests, ushabti, statues, wall paintings…..be still my beating heart! We saw so many wonderful things so quickly it is hard to remember individual items. But we were allowed to take pictures, and once we are back we will upload all of them to the VAM website.

From there we went on to meet Marilyn Hockey in the Conservation and Scientific Research department. She runs the conservation shop for ceramics, glass and metals. To get to the conservation labs, we went through a labyrinth of hallways, stairways, alleys (yes we went outside at one point and through a loading dock area into the joined basements of a row of Georgian townhomes). We visited with six conservators working on different projects. We saw a sampling of all of the kinds of projects they work on – general conservation of objects in the collection in storage, conservation of items that are on regular display, conservation of artifacts that are going out on loan, and conservation of pet projects discovered in the collection by eager assistant curators (under the skin tattoo discs “harvested” from a deceased Indian rebel from the late 19th century – oh yuck!).

A quick lunch in the Museum Tavern pub across the street from the BM, then back to our hotel to grab our suitcases and get to the Liverpool Station for our train to Norwich. A comedy of errors ensued - the wheel on Tracy's bag broke and we had to quick buy another; we just mssed the Tube train bcause we had to drag our luggage down a milion flights of stairs, the Tube stopped for a backup for 10 minutes, and the Evil Gatekeeper wouldn't let us through the turnstile with our luggage. We missed our train, but managed to get on the next one and arrived just about an hour late.

Bill Seaman, Assistant Head of Museums for the Norfolk Museums and Archaeology Service, met us at the hotel (Maids Head Hotel, reputedly the oldest continuing hotel in England) and took us on a brief walking tour of the area so that we could get our bearings. We stopped at The Lawyers pub for a pint and dinner (Thai actually – really good Basil Chicken!). It was cold and we got lost walking home, but made it eventually to a warm room, hot shower, woven blankets and down comforters – and I am going to bed y’all!