We are back in London staying in a hotel on the edge of Piccadilly Circus.

We spent today at the British Museum. Although it has a collection of about 8 million items, there aren’t anywhere near that number on display at any time. In fact, much of the museum is currently closed due to a massive reconstruction program. We did get to see most of the items we were interested in.

We saw the Rosetta Stone, the Egyptian mummies, the Elgin marbles (a collection of statues and the frieze from the Acropolis in Athens), and some huge Assyrian statues of bulls with wings. We then looked at oriental exhibits, Roman and Greek statuary, a lot of Near Eastern exhibits and statuary from Crete. The only exhibits that I wanted to see that were closed were the Magna Carta and Biblical Archeology.

There are lots of exhibits of archeological finds in Great Britain. These cover all the time periods from the Celts, through the Anglo-Saxons, and through the Roman and pos-Roman periods. Of particular interest are the treasure finds of gold and silver coins, jewelry, dishes, and weapons. The most significant exhibit, as far as the museum is concerned, is a find called the Sutton Hoo Treasure. It is a burial site where the king of chieftain was buried with a large boat and his treasures.

No pictures today.

Tomorrow its off to Scotland.

Cheerio,

Marty