The first thing I thought was quite remarkable was the condition of the actual playing board. Considering it's getting on for almost 5000 years old, the detail that remained was in really good nick, as well as the counters. I know parts have been restored however it's amazing how even parts of it managed to survive for so long. I also found out that part of the board was used for fortune telling, which is an interesting fact, knowing that the Sumerians were using boards used for gaming to also read into the future, which also reveals something about their culture as superstitious beings.
I didn't spend too long in the Mesopotamia area, I spent most of my time looking at the sculptures and high relief wall sections in the Parthenon zone. I thought it was pretty cool the amount of effort the Greeks put into depicting simple stories through these various pieces of relief that would have once decorated the walls of the Parthenon and other buildings. There were a series of relief pieces that were positioned around the exhibition space in chronological order depicting a fight between a man and a centaur. Each one looking like a different frame from an animation you might see nowadays. It occurred to me that this was alot of work to just portray a simple story, which is a great contrast to how easy it is to tell a story through visual media today.
That's all really I have to report from the day! I spent about three hours there in total but somehow I've managed to condense it down into a few short paragraphs. I spent a while drawing some of the sculptures, I'll put the images below. In conclusion I think it was a worthwhile trip, I can now say I've seen the Royal Game of Ur first hand and apart from that it was quite nice to be about in London again for the day.
[Click images to enlarge]
Tom these drawings are amazing! Hope you had a great time at the museum xD
ReplyDeleteRob
as above,
ReplyDeletesome really good drawings here.
rob