One of the more common comments of DC tourists
is "I want to see the Smithsonian". In fact, the Smithsonian
is a complex of museums, and they're not even all located on The
Mall (The National Zoo in Woodley Park, for example, is on the other
side of town, and is part of the Smithsonian complex). These pictures
are from a single hall (Western Cultures) on one floor of a single
museum (Museum of Natural History) This is about all we were able
to peruse in about an hour or so. South American cultures have their
own hall (as do Asian Cultures, dinosaur fossils, mammalian fossils
from the early Cenezoic, the Hope Diamond and other massive gemstones,
and so on) As you can see, it's quite easy to quicly become soggy
with history in an extremely short period of time. |
The pictures and captions
below are the best I could do without using a flash while taking
pictures of items behind plexiglass, and the high level, histoty-for-jocks
friendly descriptions favoured by the Smithsonian displays these
days (see here
for an example) |
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| For all of those who asked for a better picture of my
mummy ... |
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Carvings and drawings from Pharonic Egypt (near the end of the New Kingdom
era) |
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Stelle and sarcophagus of a high priestess of the god Amon-Ra (ca. 1,000 BC) |
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Various Egyptian artifacts (trade items) |
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Early Iron Age artifacts from Cyprus |
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| Trade records from Egypt and around
the Mediterranean, written in simplified hieroglyphs (Hieratic script)
and Akkadian |
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Hellenic Greek pottery (guestimating
prior to 600BC) |
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More Hellenic Greek artifacts (including
the source of the age-old question "What's a Grecian urn?") |
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| Hellenic black figure (mid 500BC
or so) and red figure (490ishBC or so) pottery |
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Late Hellenic red-figure pottery,
along with some Hellenistic artifacts |
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Carthagian mosaic (though how they found anything left after the Punic Wars is anybody's guess) |
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For everybody who's ever thought
that mummification was a bunch of bull (mummy from Ptolemeic Egypt) |
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| Hellenistic Greek art adorning
a Ptolemeic Egyptian sarcophagus |
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| Whole buncha Roman coins |
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Can't get away from paperwork, no
matter how far back in time you go |
