Today, deep within the bowels of the British Museum, we visited the museum's central archives. The archives collection is composed of six types of records--government, meetings' minutes, staff finance, building, temporary exhibitions, and reading room records. The records were actually really interesting, both in their breadth and content. One particularly interesting item we got to see was an exploded bomb shell that hit the museum during WWII. We also saw pictures of the damage. While I've read about the air raids in London, I don't know that I realized just how much was bombed and destroyed here during that time. Every site we've visited so far has had something to say on the destruction caused by the bombings. Other things we got to see included a property deed from 1694 and a folder related to their King Tut exhibit in 1973. The exhibit folder was interesting because it included all kinds of information related to the exhibit, as well as pictures of the lines of people waiting to get in.
After the archives tour, a classmate and I wandered around the British Museum and saw--among other things--the Rosetta Stone. The museum itself is massive and was too much to get through in a day; even after breaking for lunch at a pub we didn't get around to everything.
British Museum image courtesy of foundationstone.org
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