My Day at the Museums

On Saturday while Zack was at class with his advisor for most of the day, I decided to check out the local free museums and had a total blast! 

I went to the Natural History Museum first and felt just like a child again when I caught myself saying to myself, "Cool! Look at that!" and looking over to see children half my age doing the exact same thing with the same excitement in their eyes. Those kids and I. We had a moment together. We understood each other. We were both excited and the only thing we could get out of our mouths were, "cool!"

Awesome bone casts of a real life sized T-Rex

(Input childlike exclamations here...)

The T-Rex claw as compared to my hand...

Sent this picture to my husband via my phone to show him all the fun he was missing. 

And that I was being attacked! 

 Gross fact: this museum has dead things in jars for you to gross out too. :|

This is actually called the "Umbrella Squid" aka the cock-eyed squid because the right eye is normal sized, round, blue, and sunken, whereas the left eye is at least twice the size in diameter of the right eye, tubular, yellow-green, faces upwards, and bulges out of the head.

You learn something new everyday....

 Like I said, more dead things in jars....

They also have real stuffed birds that look almost alive!

A Triceratops skull!

As part of the Natural History Museum is a section called the Pitt-River's Museum. 

This section is mainly on Anthropology and the study of culture 

Here we have old playing cards as seen through the years...

 Jewelry....

Combs used in different cultures through the years...

 Cool old skeleton keys!

 The historian walked me through different armor used by different tribes like this alligator skin breast plate used in Egypt. 

I forget where this one is from, but the historian loved the bullet hole seen having gone through the "armor."

Helmut worn by Chinese warlords

Samurai gear!

Ancient blades

 An old Luger!

The view from the second story (there are three) looking at the first floor of artifacts

Beads were used as currency and this is an original chart used to determine the value

 A neat shot

 The type of microscope use on ships when travelling to new places

 Final shot before heading to the next Museum

 The Museum of the History of Science was my next stop.

Here I saw beautiful old globes!

 8ft. Mural Quadrant

 Lawrence of Arabia's archeological camera

Before his military career, T. E. Lawrence worked for the British Museum at Carchemish in Syria from 1910-14. This camera was particularly versatile, allowing him to take high quality photographs of large and small objects.

The Einstein Blackboard

Einseins original blackboard with his writing still intact!

My last stop of the day was the Ashmolean Museum which is huge!

Marble statue of Athena

Mask depicting drama...

 Syrian tunic

A plaster cast taken shortly after Oliver Cromwell's death

There's quite a few of these "lovely" masks around

Bronze head of Roman emperor Marcus Auralius 

Anne Lucy, Baroness Nugent 

Portait head of emperor Nero

 Laocoon, Rome

The Trojan priest Laocoon and his sons struggle with two flesh-eating snakes that had been sent as a devine punishment for the priest's crimes. 

Bronze statue of a roman boxer

 Lintel with kala face

Volcanic stone, Central Java AD 800-900

In Japanese religious architecture a kala face or monster mask, like the Indian kirttimukha or 'face of glory,' was placed above temple doorways and niches to protect the shrines within from evil forces.  

 Church artifacts from Constantinople 

Islamic art

There was a special event where this trumpet player interprets the artwork in front of him

Calligraphy

 

 More Samurai 

 An old chess board

Paintings from the 1700's

I took quite a few pictures that are not posted, but then it would take you days to view this whole post! I hope you enjoy and don't mind the poorer quality of the photos than usual as they were all taken with my iPhone camera.