Ancient Adventures in London

"The Shield of Achilles" 1822. Rundell, Bridge & Rundell, from a design by John Flaxman

Last week I did something that- for me- is a bit crazy: I went on vacation.  A trip to London and Bath, a chance to visit with my good friend Kristin from Simmons College, and to explore some amazing new places- why not?

"Helen of Troy" ~1812. Antonio Canova

The adventure came about when I heard the British Museum was holding a temporary exhibit on Troy: myth and reality.  It started with "I wish I could see that" and eventually turned into "why not?".  Kristin was more than willing to go with me and we spent a day exploring the exhibit, as well as some of the Greek and Assyrian permanent exhibits the Museum displays.   Troy was a good exhibit, with pottery, statues, and paintings of different stories and interpretations of Homer's Iliad and Odyssey.  The exhibit design kept things simple: interpretations were basic ones stating the myth being depicted.  What emphasis and interpretation the viewer wanted out of the experience was up to them.  Was this an art exhibit featuring fantastic statues and pottery?  Were we meant to think of the incredible impact these epic poems have had across the Western world's culture? Debate war and culture, genocide and regrowth (the exhibit did remind us that Aeneas left fallen Troy and went on to found Rome). A brief section at the end (Kristin overheard one visitor remark: "Women at the end. Nothing's changed") brought up the idea of women in the story, while rather neutrally leaving us to debate feminism and female influence in a patriarchal world over lunch in the museum's cafe.

Mithraeum inner temple

The next day continued our Roman Holiday with a trip to the London Mithraeum- a place I accidentally heard about online before my trip and was thrilled that Kristin was also up for seeing.  A reconstructed Roman temple to Mithras, a "faithful recreation of the ruin that was discovered in 1952-54" on a bomb site according to their publications, the Mithraeum highlights a selection of 600 extremely well preserved artifacts from the time period.  They used technology to cleverly help visitors engage with the wall of artifacts: visitors could pick up a tablet and find any artifact on the wall mirrored on the tablet's main page.  Tapping the image gave visitors more detailed explanations of what they were looking at, and meant that people could move around and see things without slowing going from one artifact label to another.  It also clearly engaged children who might otherwise not have been interested.  When ready you descend into a chamber where you can sit and listen to archaeologists giving recorded talks or you could explore the interactive displays that explained Mithras, what was known about the temple and the ceremonies, and pointed out specific designs carved into the stone that would have been part of the alter.  Going into the recreated temple itself you experienced a well done, brief interactive: visitors stand along the sides and watch as the changing lights create the effect of seeing columns, hearing people chanting and moving about, etc.

Centerpiece design of Mithraeum. Museum of London

While reading about the temple we noticed that the statues themselves were on display at the Museum of London. We were interested and walked over the find them.  The Roman exhibits have clearly not been updated in awhile, but overall stood the test of time.  Plenty of families were exploring the exhibits when we were there, although we found the area for Mithras pretty quiet.  Having gone from the Mithraeum itself to this exhibit was fascinating, and really let us get the entire feeling of the site and the life worshipers might have been living.




Note: This blog post is not attempting to analyze the exhibits, or museums, in professional terms- although I may come back and do that in another post. The Mithraeum in particular left me highly impressed in terms of professional exhibits.  This is simply a general post to let friends and family know what I've been up to, and maybe encourage others to explore these museums.