The Four Things: Focusing at the British Museum

This post is the tenth in our “England 2015”:/news/category/travel/england-2015/ series.

“One day some soldiers were digging near Rosetta when they found a stone, something like a tombstone with three kinds of writing on it….This stone is called the Rosetta Stone. It is now in the great British Museum in London and is very famous, because from it we were able to learn so much history that we otherwise would not have known.” — V.M. Hillyer, A Child’s History of the World
Viewing the Rosetta Stone.

In the spirit of not overextending ourselves, we walked into the “British Museum”:http://www.britishmuseum.org/ with the intention of focusing on four things: the “Rosetta Stone”:https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rosetta_Stone, the “Lewis Chessmen”:https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lewis_chessmen, the “Elgin marbles”:https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elgin_Marbles, and the “Egyptian Cat”:https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gayer-Anderson_cat. It was clear that we could spend weeks here, but we didn’t. “We’ll have to do that next time we’re in England.”

Attacked by gargoyles!

Before we entered the museum on this gorgeous, sunny day, we stopped for a selfie. Suddenly, gargoyles attacked us. It was the first incident of the kind on our vacation, but not the last. How did they keep finding us?

Since The British Museum is so huge, it took nearly 90 minutes for us to find and admire our four destination objects. Along the way, we admired the general splendor, including…
The golden bee-wreath.
…this golden wreath, complete with golden bees…

A bust of Demosthenes.

…and this bust of Demosthenes that looked like our friend Howard…
Inspiring cool hair style!

…and the really cool hairstyle worn by another museum patron.
The Egyptian Cat.

Periodically on our trip, we were struck with the sudden urge to interact deeply with the art around us — and the Egyptian Cat was irresistible. Look how cute he is!
Amazed by the Egyptian Cat.
Let’s attack him!

Friends of the Egyptian Cat.
On second thought, let’s be his best friends!

A tiny brocade cat from the British Museum.
Even with our self-imposed limits, we left the museum saturated with beauty and wonder — and richer by a dozen glossy postcards and a tiny brocade kitten. Mission accomplished!

Read the next post in our “England 2015”:/news/category/travel/england-2015/ series: Impromptu Magic: One bartender’s transformation of an ordinary lunch.

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