Day 3: The British Museum

After a good night sleep, nice relaxing breakfast, reading emails and blogs, I headed towards the British museum. As I entered the building, its huge size and tall gorgeous ceiling haunted me. There were so many sections: ancient Egypt, Iran, Iraq, Africa, etc. I could spend days visiting this museum. The first part I encountered attracted me immediately. It was about how people in various countries, cultures, and religions deal with hardships.


People everywhere experience trouble, sorrow, need, and sickness and develop skills and knowledge in response to these adversities.

There were pictures of various disasters, natural or man-made, from all over the world through out the years accompanied by nice poems and quotations. Poems were probably not the focus of this museum, but I was most focused on reading those. Here are some of them:

The wind is level now, the earth is wet with dew, the storm of stars in the sky will turn to quiet. And soon all of us will sleep under the earth, we who never let each other sleep above it.
from I know the truth- give up all other truths! by Marina Tsvetayeva, 1892-1941

Pain splinters me. I am cracked like glass. I taste salt, my own fear, can save me nothing.
from In Hospital by Gwen Harwood, 1920-1995

Sometimes things don't go, after all,
from bad to worse. Some years, muscadel
faces down frost; green thrives; the crops don't fail,
sometimes a man aims high, and all goes well.
(from Sometimes by Sheenagh Pugh, 1950-)

Here is a glass of water from my well.
It tastes of rock and root and earth and rain;
It is the best I have, my only spell,
And it is cold, and better than champagne.
from A Glass of Water by May Sarton, 1912-1995

The Single clenched fist lifted and ready,
Or the open asking hand held out and waiting,
Choose:
For we meet by one or the other.
Choose by Carl Sandburg, 1878-196?

Then, I saw a section on ancient China with so many gorgeous jeweleries made of Jade. They described the two chemical combinations of Jadeitite and Nephrite, and how one is much more expensive than the other. Guess how jewelers identify a real jade from a fake one? The same way in remotes sensing we recognize fire, water, different minerals, vegetation, etc : spectroscopy. They each have their unique spectral signature.

I later went to the Enlightenment era (1680-1820), apparently the age of reason, discovery, and learning that changed the way people viewed the world. This was achieved by observing and studying the natural and man-made world. Did you know the word scientist has been used only in 1900s and had we were living in 1800s I would have been a philosopher? There were minerals collected by a physician called Sir Hans Sloane. He used them as medicine for kidney, skin, cold, poisoning, etc. There is also a museum named after him here. I should learn more about him. There were Parkinson's fossils named after the surgeon who found them and is famous for describing what is called today the Parkinson's disease. However, his fossils had enabled Darwin to identify one type of whale as an extinct species.

The Rosetta stone was there too. So was parts of Persepolis (actual rocks of it) and of Nemrud. There were large statues, gates, reconstructed models, real broken parts, etc. It gave the atmosphere of Persepolis. How on earth did they transport all of these here, and where was the Iranian government? Well, there was also a section on how many Mesopotamian remnants have been destroyed since 2003 as a result of the Iraq war. Maybe it is a good idea to have historical valuables in different parts of the world.

Finally, I stopped by a table where a lady was describing some historical items. She called them prehistoric. She asked us "what does prehistoric mean"? I responded: "before writing started". She was so happy. She asked where I was from. "Welcome! We do not get many visitors from Iran", she said happily. "In places like Iran, writing had started about 7000 years ago, but it arrived in Britain only 3-4 thousands years ago. So, prehistoric means different times for different places", she continued. The items were clays formed for cutting meat, smoking, etc. She was passionate about her stories and did not have a British accent. After she learned I am traveling from Maryland, she happily said "I am from Washington DC.", "Do you miss D.C.?", I asked. "I came here for one summer twenty five years ago, and I never went back. They do not have guns here, no mosquitoes, and they have the health system, not like the nonsense that is happening in the U.S. now. My sister, she has five kids and no health insurance. no health insurance!", she yelled. "How can you not want the public health insurance?!", she wondered. She asked me if I knew of any prehistoric items or sites in Iran. Things that are discovered and are older than the age of writing in Iran. Things that no one had written on them. Well, it showed how poor my history is. I did not know of any such site or object. Do you?