Museums, Museums, Museums!

Magical Book Exhibit - Bodleian Library

We visited several museums / exhibits while in Oxford. In the Bodleian Library, we saw an awesome book exhibit entitled Magical books - Middle Ages through Middle Earth. The exhibit had books with artwork depicting alchemy, unicorns, mermen, etc. dating back to the 14th century. They also had original drawings of Middle Earth and Narnia. We couldn't take pictures, but I've included the image from the exhibit's webpage. 

We also visited the Ashmolean Museum. This museum was free, very large, and very, very old. In fact, the first picture below is part of a BC-era egyptian wall that was donated to the Ashmolean in 1628. Yup, the museum  is at least 385 years old. I guess if you've been collecting artifacts for 400 or so years, you're apt to have a pretty amazing collection. 

Egyptian wall donated to Ashmolean Museum in 1628

They had everything laid out not only regionally, but also showing the timeline. They had the ancient Egyptian artifacts merge into the ancient Roman, Celtic, and Asian artifacts.

Greek tragedy statue

Gold death mask

On the upper floors they had a lot of the more recent artifacts. And by more recent, I mean middle ages (14th century) and later, also somewhat arranged by region. 

Chess Set

Virginal - basically a piano / harpsichord hybrid

On the top floor were the two special exhibits that Bill & I paid to enter. The first one, Master Drawings, did not allow photography, but it had drawings by Da Vinci, Michelangelo, Cezanne, Degas, etc. 

The other special exhibit was on Stradivarius and included many of his violins and other instruments. The pictures really don't do the instuments justice, but here are a few photos. We wish we could have heard a few of them in action! 

First known Stradivarius Violin

Ornate Stradivarius violin

Ornate violin - side view

Stradivarius mandolin

Last but not least, we went to the Museum of Science. This museum was also awesome. They had scientific instruments dating back hundreds and hundreds of years. Instruments that calibrated things. Instruments that held energy. Medical instruments (these were rather scary!) and astronomical instruments. But I think my favorite was Albert Einstein's chalkboard with his equations that someone knew to save for posterity! 

Albert Einstein's Chalkboard