The British Museum

I just returned from this year's trip to Uganda to preach at the African Bible College.  As before, it was a truly inspiring time of ministry and fellowship.  I thought that I would chronicle the trip in a number of posts.  Our flight from Miami to Heathrow to Entebbe gave us a twelve hour layover in London.  Jet-lagged as we were, the four of us who went had a very enjoyable (and expensive!) time there.

The highlight of our time in London was a visit to The British Museum, which houses the treasures of antiquity unearthed by British archaeologists.  I highly recommend that anyone going through London make time for this incredible museum. Among the well-known treasured housed in the British Museum are the Rosetta Stone, the collection of statuary from the Parthenon, lots of mummies, and large exhibits from the Assyrian palace-city of Nimrud.  What impressed and interested me most was the Assyrian collection.  I had not realized how sophisticated their culture was and I greatly enjoyed seeing the many inscribed walls showing the conquests of Ashurbanipal, Ashurnasurpal and other noteworthy kings.  Many of the artifacts from this period are of great biblical interest.  One item I went looking for was the famous cylinder that solved the puzzle of Bel-shazzar, the Assyrian king featured in Daniel's visit of the hand writing on the wall.  For many years, scholars argued that this was an error in the Bible, since Bel-shazzar's name is not listed as an Assyrian king -- his father Nabonidus being the last before the Medo-Persian conquest.  But a cylinder scroll was found being a message from Nabonidus (who had gone into self-imposed exile in the desert with the moon cult) to his son and regent Bel-shazzar and this cleared up the problem.  Sure enough, that cylinder is in the British Museum and I was thrilled to see it. 

Another fantastic item was the Black Obelisk of Shalmaneser III, which shows the Jewish King Jehu giving tribute and provides important confirmation of the Bible as well.  Oh, and the Roman statuary was quite impressive, too.  The really good stuff is in the British Museum, including pristine full-length sculptures of numerus well-known emperors.  The reading room is also awesome, but we didn't get to spend much time there.

All in all, I would recommend anyone visiting The British Museum.  I only with I had more time, but the several hours our group spent there was well-rewarded.