Tag: Art
-
The Complaint Tablet of Ea-nasir
The British Museum is full of all sorts of things that shouldn’t be there. One less well-known example, beyond the Elgin Marbles and the Rosetta Stone, is an initially inconspious clay tablet, traditionally referred to as ‘The Complaint Tablet of Ea-nasir’. The tablet itself is made of clay, c.12cm by 5cm, and covered in cuneiform…
-
The Franks Casket
One of the ‘Anglo-Saxon’ period‘s most impressive, and most complex, artefacts is the so-called ‘Franks Casket’. A lidded whalebone box, covered in intricate carvings and text, the casket appears to originate from an early eight-century Northumbrian context. But what was it used for, and what can it tell us? Finding the Casket The existence in…
-
Bayeux Tapestry Online
The Bayeux Tapestry (technically an embroidery not a tapestry) is one of our best accounts of the conquest of ‘Anglo-Saxon‘ England by the Normans in 1066. Running from the end of the reign of Edward the Confessor to the aftermath of the battle at Hastings, the work covers a massive 70 meters and is kept…
-
The Ashmolean Cast Gallery – do ‘fakes’ matter?
All the way at the back of Oxford’s Ashmolean Museum lies the Cast Gallery. It houses an impressive collection of ‘Classical‘ sculpture works, collected from 1884 onwards. There are few places, especially in the UK, where you can experience such a density of statues in so small a space, and it’s a great experience for…