Beautifully displaced

I read this phrase the moment I stepped into the Great Court of the British Museum. The words, engraved on the marble floor, caught my attention immediately. I remember standing there, reading them twice, trying to absorb their meaning. As I found out later, they come from a poem by Alfred, Lord Tennyson, and they felt both timeless and ironic. I had entered the place reluctantly, with the well known bitterness that many Greeks feel about the Parthenon marbles. Yet, as much as I wanted to resist, I couldn’t help but be impressed. Even at night, with no daylight filtering through the glass roof, the space had an undeniable grandeur.

Walking further inside, I reached the rooms with the Greek sculptures. Seeing them up close was a curious experience, both familiar and distant at once. I had seen these figures so many times in books and documentaries, but standing there in front of them was different. The museum has done an excellent job with the lighting and presentation. The space is calm, the marble almost luminous. Still, there’s a mismatch. These works were made for open skies and sunlight, and here they rest under careful spotlights. Beautifully displayed, but somehow still far from where they belong.

Leaving the Greek sculptures behind, I walked into the Egyptian section. The atmosphere changed immediately. The shapes were stranger, the faces less human and more symbolic. Gods with animal heads, mummified creatures, boats for the journey to the afterlife. It felt like stepping into another dimension of time.

And yet, as I moved from one glass case to another, one thought kept coming back to me. Here I was, in the heart of London, surrounded by fragments of other worlds. Everything around me had traveled thousands of miles to be here, displayed under one roof. A museum that holds the history of so many others, and yet none of its own.

By the time I reached the last rooms, I had already traveled from Greece to Egypt and from Mesopotamia to the distant coasts of North America. Each civilization, each object, a fragment of a world that once was. It’s hard not to feel awe in front of such craftsmanship, and yet, there’s a quiet discomfort too. All these pieces of history gathered here, far from the lands and the people who made them.

I left the museum with mixed feelings. Admiration, of course, but also a sense of distance. Like walking through the memory of humanity, preserved but displaced. And as I stepped out into the London night, I couldn’t help but think how strange it is that the story of the world can fit under one roof and still feel incomplete.

I took those pictures on January 9th 2006, almost twenty years ago. I don't know what's gotten into me lately and I keep digging through old folders, maybe it's a midlife crisis or something like that :)

I have written, in 2022, one more post about that trip to London, that you can read here.

This is my entry for the #monomad challenge.