British Museum: Classical Day

The weather was better when we left the museum today, which allowed us to get our hoped-for group picture.

Even the most dedicated museum goer can experience mental and physical fatigue, which is why I have divided our visits to the big museums, such as the British Museum and the Louvre, into two days. As ANES coordinator, I have tried to be even-handed about our treatment of the ancient world, valuing ANES-HebBib and ANES-GrkNT majors equally and encouraging the students of one language and emphasis to get some exposure to the other. But as a former Classicist, who did his graduate work in all things Greek and Roman, I must admit that I was a *little* bit more excited about today.

And, as a practical matter, I simply know the Classical holdings better and was able to make better assignments and assist the students more.

The back entrance on Montague Place where groups enter the museum.

 

The Great Court.

So, once again, we entered the British Museum from the back entrance, went into the Great Court, and held our orientation, discussing the day's assignments and reviewing quickly the different periods and stylistic developments of Greek vases, sculpture, and architecture with just a little information about Roman copying of Greek masterpieces and adaptations of the various media.

Part of our museum approach is to work through the collection in groups of three or four students, with each one taking time to explain artifacts that she or he has worked on.

 We were then off and running for the next three hours!


Bronze Age Aegean

The precursors of Greek civilization were three Bronze Age cultures in the Aegean Sea: the Minoan culture on the island of Crete; the Cycladic culture in the central Aegean islands; and the Helladic, or Mycenaean, culture on the mainland (though technically Mycenaean only refers to Late Helladic). These serve as an important bridges with the ancient Near East, since these cultures were contemporaneous with many of the ones we discussed yesterday and were heavily influenced by them.

The Minoan and Mycenaean cultures, by the way, are the settings of many of the earliest Greek myths. The Trojan War was probably fought in the Late Helladic Period, and memories of Mycenaean culture and battles probably underlie Homer's Iliad and Odyssey.

My students did not have any particular assignments for these galleries, but I enjoyed going through them again!

Cycladic artifacts, especially the so-called "violin figures."  Photo © 2017 Eric Huntsman, taken courtesy of the Trustees of the British Museum for educational purposes only.

Photo © 2017 Eric Huntsman, taken courtesy of the Trustees of the British Museum for educational purposes only.

Mycenaean pottery. Photo © 2017 Eric Huntsman, taken courtesy of the Trustees of the British Museum for educational purposes only.

Mycenaean bronze weapons . . . think the Trojan War. Photo © 2017 Eric Huntsman, taken courtesy of the Trustees of the British Museum for educational purposes only.

Photo © 2017 Eric Huntsman, taken courtesy of the Trustees of the British Museum for educational purposes only.

Archaic Greece

Following the collapse of the Mycenaean World, Greece moved into a period that early moderns called "The Greek Dark Age." There was not much left in terms of monumental architecture or sculpture, though there was a lot of what is called Protogeometric and Geometric pottery.

With the renewal of trade and literacy, civilization revived, ushering in what we call Archaic Greece, a period from roughly c. 750-500 B.C. when so much of what we usually think of Greek culture was first developed (though the various art and literary forms all culminated in the Classical Period). This was the period when  Doric architecture began, and we will be seeing a lot of Archaic sculpture, notably the characteristic kouros (naked young male figure) and korē (draped young femaile figure) in subsequent museums. Here we focused mostly upon painting, in particular Black Figure vase painting.

Photo © 2017 Eric Huntsman, taken courtesy of the Trustees of the British Museum for educational purposes only.

Photo © 2017 Eric Huntsman, taken courtesy of the Trustees of the British Museum for educational purposes only.

Classical Greece

The Classical Period saw the "perfection" of art in a number of media, including Red Figure Vase Painting, Classical sculpture (with idealized figures both at rest and in action), and a perfected Doric and new Ionic architectural style. This was the Golden Age of Athens, which witnessed her triumphs in both literature and the arts but also her collapse after her brief foray into empire and imperialism.

The styles perfected in Athens and elsewhere spread throughout the Greek world and into surrounding areas.

Gallery 18 contains the Elgin Marbles, sculptural elements from the famed Parthenon in Athens that were brought to London in the Ottoman Period.

A picture that every Classicist needs with his daughter! Photo © 2017 Eric Huntsman, taken courtesy of the Trustees of the British Museum for educational purposes only

Photo © 2017 Eric Huntsman, taken courtesy of the Trustees of the British Museum for educational purposes only.

Metope with Lapith and Centaur. Photo © 2017 Eric Huntsman, taken courtesy of the Trustees of the British Museum for educational purposes only.

Part of the inner continuous Ionic frieze depicting the Panathenaic Procession. Photo © 2017 Eric Huntsman, taken courtesy of the Trustees of the British Museum for educational purposes only

The Nereid Monument from Xanthos. Photo © 2017 Eric Huntsman, taken courtesy of the Trustees of the British Museum for educational purposes only

A massive tomb built for Maussollos of Halikarnassos (seen here with his wife Artemsia and three of my students) was the origin for our term "mausoleum." His was one of the Seven Wonders of the Ancient World. Photo © 2017 Eric Huntsman, taken courtesy of the Trustees of the British Museum for educational purposes only

Roman Copies of Greek Masterpieces

Many Greek statues were originally cast in bronze, but because this metal was valuable, subsequent ages that did not value them as much frequently melted them down. Fortunately, the Roman appetite for Greek masterpieces outstripped the supply, so in the Late Republic and the Imperial Period many stone copies were made of bronze originals.

Photo © 2017 Eric Huntsman, taken courtesy of the Trustees of the British Museum for educational purposes only.

Slighting the Roman Period . . .

Well, I have done it again. My lack of stamina and pacing, both in taking pictures in the museum and staying up late blogging about them later, has resulted in my slighting the later periods. This is particularly shameful for me given that in an earlier career life I was a Roman historian!

To be fair to myself, The Roman collection in the British Museum is considerably smaller than the Greek and Hellenistic . . .

Sarcophagus of the Etruscan noblewoman Seianti Hanunia Tiensas. Photo © 2017 Eric Huntsman, taken courtesy of the Trustees of the British Museum for educational purposes only.

The so-called Meroe Head of Augustus, a surviving bronze with inset eyes! Photo © 2017 Eric Huntsman, taken courtesy of the Trustees of the British Museum for educational purposes only.

 Well, I promise to make up for it in subsequent museums . . . and of course in Rome itself!

The British Library

After a quick lunch, we took a detailed tour of the British Library, which has the second largest collection in the world.

 

Although pictures are not allowed in the Treasures Room, this public display area has remarkable documents such as the Magna Carta, early folios of Shakespeare, and notes and drawing from Leonardo da Vinci. Especially exciting for my ANES students were two of the three oldest Greek manuscripts of the Bible, the Codex Sinaiticus and Codex Alexandrinus; several beautifully illustrated Hebrew texts, a copy of the Gutenberg Bible, and an original Tyndale.

Evensong at St. Paul's

And what is a day in England without evensong? Tonight I met a number of my students at St. Paul's, where the servive commemorated the 175th anniversary of the Royal Association of Deaf People. Beautiful to see the service signed as well as hear it sung.