A Day in the Museum

Today I met up with my old school friend Jenny for a visit to the British Museum.

It's such a huge place that you can only see a small proportion in one day.


We discovered that part of the Staffordshire Hoard was on display. This is the biggest hoard of gold Anglo Saxon artefacts ever found in the UK, and the finder (a detectorist) and landowner are entitled to receive the full value of £3.3 million. So in order to keep it the regional museums have to raise that amount of money by April 16th, or it can be sold on the open market. The BM is helping the campaign.

But the main focus of our visit was to track down the first 30 items of the radio programme A History of the World in 100 Objects. The Museum Director, Neil MacGregor, chose 100 items from the Museum's collection that he felt have particular significance in the history of humans on the planet.

The programme's first 30 15-minute episodes aired earlier this year over a 6-week period. The omnibus edition appears here:

http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b00nrtf5

The items are not necessarily large or well-known (though some are), and they have not been collected together in one room, so you have to hunt around the museum for them (room numbers are given) so we had great fun hunting for the panels that identified the items in each room we visited. We also saw a lot of other great items in the process, including Lindow Man, a peat bog murder victim) and the Rosetta Stone.

This is an early writing tablet from Iraq. I think it's exquisite. I recommend Googling King Den's sandal label, the swimming reindeer, and the Mold gold cape.

In the end, we saw 20 of the 30, but even with a lovely lunch in the restaurant (with a great drink called a Chapman) we ended the day in pouring rain and strong winds with our legs dropping off.

But of course, we'll do it all again some day! Not tomorrow though.