Last September, I went to United Kingdom on a special occasion for a competition that held by EF. I was one of the representative from my school, SMA Labschool Kebayoran. I went there with my 10 other friends and a teacher. In United Kingdom, we stayed in Oxford for 2 weeks, during our long school break, which was from 4th to 18th September.
The University of Oxford might be the first thing that pop out from your mind when you hear the word “Oxford”. The city of Oxford is the county town of Oxfordshire, England. Oxford is a small city with population just under 165,000. Oxford is well known as the “city of dreaming spires”, reference to the harmonious architechture of Oxford University’s buldings.
The University of Oxford is the second oldest surviving university in the world and the oldest in the English-speaking world. The University of Oxford has a lot of colleges, libraries, and also museums which spread around Oxford that become the tourist attractions.
Eventhough I was there for a competition, I did some sightseeing around Oxford and got the chance to visit some museums. The tour leader took us to the famous Ashmolean Museum and Museum of the History of Science. Here, I’d like to share my museum visit experience.
On the 5th day of the trip, I visited Ashmolean Museum. Ashmolean Museum is known as the world’s first university museum. It’s located on Beaumont Street, only ten-minute walk from the City Centre.
Basically, I’m not that type of person who enjoys going to museum. I find it boring sometimes, but my mindset suddenly changed when I saw Ashmolean Museum for the first time. It is a really huge museum which designed with Victorian classical style architecture. Ashmolean Museum has five floors with a restaurant and a large gift shop on it. I’m amazed by how it’s designed and how huge it is, even the entrance already caught my attention. I could feel that horror feeling when I first went in to the museum. But I felt a different atmosphere, that desire to explore this museum.
The Ashmolean Museum was first opened in the 17th century, on 24th May 1683 to be exact. The first building, which became known as the Old Ashmolean, is sometimes attributed to Sir Christopher Wren or Thomas Wood. After the various specimens had been moved into new museums, the "Old Ashmolean" building on Broad Street was used as office space for the Oxford English Dictionary staff. Since 1924, the building has been established as the Museum of the History of Science. The present building dates from 1845. It was designed by Charles Cockerell. The main museum contains huge collections of archaeology specimens and fine art. The museum is named after Elias Ashmole, an aficionado of antiquities who studied at the University of Oxford while posted to the military.
The Ashmolean Museum has now been transformed to the double gallery space, and so has the interior. The interior has now been modernized. It was Rick Mather who was behind this renovation. The renovation began in 2006 and finished in 2009. The Ashmolean Museum now has 39 galleries. These are some of the collections that I’d like to show you:
· Priest-King
The relief figure of the ‘Priest-King’ (1700-1450 BC) is one of the most recognizable of the Knossos frescoes. The fragments were found in 1901 to the south of the Central Court of the Palace at Knossos. Arthur Evans originally thought that they belonged to three male figures, perhaps part of an elaborate procession.
The subsequent reconstruction of a single figure was conceived gradually in Evan’s mind, in step with the development of his ideas about Minoan religion and kingship. Evans thought that the’Priest-King’ was the ruler of Knossos and adopted son on earth of the Minoan Goddess. Most scholars now argue against Evans’s reconstruction and interpretation of the figure.
· Grave monument of Archippus
Greek grave monuments often resembled small bulidings with columns supporting a triangular pediment above. Here, we see the deceased Archippus accompanied by two servants, their status indicated by their small size. In the background can be seen a vase, probably silver. Probably from Smyrna, third to second century BC.
· Plater cast of upper part of a marble relief
King Antiochius I of Commagene clasps the right hand of Hercules.
Cast by Hamdi-Bey, Carl Humann, and Otto Puchstein in 1883 from the original at Nemrud Dagi, sout-east Turkey.
This is one of a series of sculptures celebrating the god-like status of Antiochus at his tomb on Nemrud Dagi. Elaborately dressed in Persian clothes, tiara and diadem, the king proclaims himself a friend to the Greeks and Romans in the text on the back of the original sculpture.
· Vishnu
Mathura, AD 300-400, Sandstone. In this early Gupta style image, Vishnu is represented as a four-armed, princely figure wearing a crown, garland and jewellery.
· Head of Shiva
Mathura, AD 400-425. Sandstone. This powerful head of shiva, with ascetic’s locks and the third eye of yogic insight, may hve belonged to a full-length image or else to a mukhalinga, the primordial phallic form of Shivsa in which the face of the god projects from its side.
· Bronze portrait of Augustus. From Meroe in Nubia (Sudan), 30-2- BC
The well-preserved head was found deliberately buried beneath the entrance of a local temple in Meroe. It had probably been torn from a statue somewhere in upper Egypt during Nubian raids into the Roman province in 25-20 BC. The bronze follows the main authorized portrait image of Augustus (Prima Porta type), known in some 150 versions.
· Tragic Masks
Pair of tragic masks, first century BC to first century AD. A tragic king and a tragic heroine; said to have come ‘form a theatre’. A Roman period rendition in marble of the kind of wooden masks that were worn by actors in classical Greece. A fragment of Apulian pottery of the fourth century BC in the Martin-von-Wagner Museum in Wurzburg shos such an actor holding a tragic mask.
· John Horne Tooke (1736-1812)
Sir Francis Chantrey, plaster cast 1810
Tooke was a friend and supporter of Chantrey in his early years in London, and this bust is informal and personal. He was identified with a number of radical causes, calling for a political reform, and was tried for treason and acquitted in 1794.
· Anne Lucy, Baroness Nugent (1790-1848)
Sir Francis Chantrey, plaster cast, 1830
The unusual termination of the burst us inspired by a Roman bust in the British Museum of Clytie. A nymoh who had fallen in love with the god Helios and was turned in to a sunflowe, Chantrey was a frequent visitor to the British Museum throughout his carrier, studying the collections of classical sculpture.
· Nike of Pionios, form Olympia, c. 425-421 BC
The winged goddess Nike (Victoria) is flying in to land on top of a tall triangular pillar. At the ame time an eagle passes beneath her feet. The figure was made of Parian marble, by the sculptor Paionios of Mende. It was found fallen from its base in front of the temple of zeus, where the traveler Pausanias had seen it in the mid-second century AD. The speed of her descent presses the thin dress of Victory against her body, This was a favorite motif among Greek sculptors in the late fifth Century BC. The triangular pillar was 8.80 m tall and carried the following inscription:
The Messenians and Naupaktians dedicated as a tithe from Mtheir wars to Olympian Zeus. Paionois of Mende made it, Paionios also won the competition to make the akroteria for the temple.
