Earlier at the British Museum –
I found it mind-boggling to be within a few inches from the 15-tonne statue of a lion* that adorned the temple of Ishtar in Nimrud, Mesopotamia 3,000 years ago.
You could look at something like this as if it were nothing more than a huge bronze, which now happens to sit in a museum, and casually move onto the next artifact.
But if you make the mental exercise to imagine and place it in the moment in time it was designed for, you realise that it’s seen a lot of pasts passing by – and that it has a lot of stories to tell.
This piece of bronze has been around for more than you and I ever will and will continue to see and hear things that have not yet happened turning into pasts.
– And that’s the mind-boggling part of it.
*This is known as the ‘Colossal lion from Nimrud’ and you can find it in Room 6: Assyrian sculpture at the British Museum.
Irina Writes 