Mummies

In November, we had tried to go to Manchester, to see an exhibition about golden mummies in the Manchester Museum. It had been Susan's idea. I don't have an unusual fascination with mummies, but it sounded like a fun day out! We didn't make it, though; there had been an awful traffic accident on the route, and traffic was completely jammed. We had to turn back, and abandoned mission.

Suddenly a message came from Susan; should we try again? On a Saturday? And I said yes. So we tried again! It wasn't without risk; that Saturday there was a weather warning out, courtesy of storm Kathleen. And storms sometimes also cause traffic disruption. But she and Dean just picked me up, and we drove Eastwards without incident. 

We had a bit of lunch and then headed to the museum. We had a time slot to enter the exhibition, and it wasn't that time yet, so we first had to look at the general archaeology section. That was a bit confusing; there didn't seem to be much of an order with regard to time and place. But I like seeing old stuff! And then we went to see the actual exhibition.

The museum

I thought it was a bit underwhelming, but so be it. The wrapping of some of these mummies is amazing! And when we were out, we just headed to the café for a drink, and then to the natural history part of the museum. That was fab! Some of it was a bit slapstick; some of the taxidermy seems to not have gone entirely according to plan. But it was great to look at animals and rocks and fossils and stuff like that.

A golden mummy

A non-golden mummy with impressive bandaging and portrait
 

The building on the inside 

Not sure East African spring hares really look like this 

They also was a geological overview of time. I like that sort of stuff! And there even was a bit about the history of understanding of the climate system! That is really up my street. It started with the scientists of the time still sticking to the biblical flood assumption, and then the evolution of understanding of things such as geological time, and the ice ages with their causation. And there are also were samples from the Challenger expedition! That is such a crucial event in palaeo-environmental research. It was people on a wooden sailing boat cris-crossing the Earth between 1872 and 1876. And the reports they wrote on the basis of what they had done are still so valuable in the present day. Their foram report is still a seminal work. Many of the species they describe have since been renamed, but who this day and age can spend four years on a research cruise? I assume they also had a lot of time to deal with their samples, and publishing their results. Probably, the people involved were independently wealthy. And I'm glad that nowadays you don't need to be anymore. But they did the work, and they clearly had the time to give all of it their full attention, and not just the spectacular bits, and it is great we can still benefit from it.

Challenger samples

When we had seen all that we were a bit museumed out. And we got back without incident. A good day out!