ANCIENT WORLDS

I don’t often look forward to heading on to the big city as a rule (as regular visitors to these pages will already know), but after catching the last twenty minutes of a TV programme called “Unsafe Sex in the City” the night before, the city seemed an even scarier place to be visiting than even I had previously thought possible. (It wasn’t the unlikely prospect of the “Unsafe Sex” part that had bothered me so much, by the way, but more the merest possibility that the dreadful characters interviewed during the programme might just possibly be in the same postcode area as me, even if only for a couple of hours…)

But, ultimately, we had the tickets anyway, and, despite the fatigue of being more than halfway through another working week, we thought that we’d go along, not least because we’d been assured that there were indeed only “100 tickets available” for the event in question and having got hold of a pair, it would have seemed rude not to then turn up.

The tickets were for an event called “Ancient Worlds” which was the “grand re-opening” of several of the exhibition galleries at the Manchester Museum after their recent refurbishment. As one of the galleries includes a large section of artifacts from Egyptian archeological exploration, part of me was rather hoping that, in the best tradition of all those old “Mummy” horror movies, that the opening ceremony would be interrupted in the kind of scenario where the smart set gather and the “I declare the museum open…” speech gets interrupted by a sudden scream, as Boris Karloff erupts from a sarcophagus or somesuch, but alas, this was not to be…

There were, of course, far more than one hundred people there when we arrived, but, despite my usual terror of crowds and crowded places, I convinced myself that they were unlikely to be a “rough crowd” seeing as we were all celebrating the reopening of a museum, and I grabbed myself a complimentary lemonade and began to circulate, or rather, move around a busy room full of people and try not to get in the way of too many of them.

There was a string quartet, and a couple of speeches to declare the exhibition “officially open” and suchlike, whilst many of the people looked at the tiny screens of the telephones in their hands instead of what was going on right in front of them, but, on the whole, this was just an excellent opportunity to spend a couple of hours of an evening having a good look at the exhibits at a time of the day when the place is usually shut up for the night and with, if not exactly an intimately tiny group, certainly a relatively small crowd of like-minded people around me, all trying their very best not to get in each other’s way, and generally succeeding.

At first I was convinced that, to my own great shame, I had never actually visited the museum before, but as I walked around one or two of the collections, some of the architecture started to seem a little bit familiar, and I was transported back to a time that I rarely think about these days when I spent a number of Saturdays In Loco Parentis, trying to find interesting ways to amuse the children who lived in a house which I rented a room in. I’m pretty sure now that one of the things we did was a trip to that very museum, although I really could have sworn that this was my first visit there…

But this was not an evening to ponder on such things, this was an evening to explore, with great excitement, the many wonders to be found in the display cases of the three new exhibition galleries and more, and, whilst I might be more than a little uncomfortable with the art of taxidermy in general, I will admit that the vast numbers of birds on display in the Natural History exhibits were an absolute godsend to this very amateur bird-watcher who sometimes struggles with the basics of species identification even when I’ve got an guide book in my hand.

I really must return to that section again… (If only I had taken my proper camera with me instead of just my telephone... Some of the pictures might have been incredible...)

The Egyptian Room is, of course, always impressive. I do so worry that there will come a time when the artifacts are “politely requested” to be returned to their country of origin, so perhaps it would be best to make the most of the opportunity to see these things whilst you still can. Of course, the speech-makers did mention that the Museum of Antiquities in Cairo was one of the institutions which needed thanking for their support, so I’m hoping that this means that they’re actually fine with it. After all, it would be a shame if the only way for everyone to experience the history of any culture was to have to actually go to whichever country it is. That way, I believe, lies a far more insular mindset which is never really good for any of us.

My own favourite moment came, of course, when I was able to follow a sign marked “T-Rex” which was pointing to some quiet and forgotten looking staircase. I ventured downstairs and, despite the hustle and bustle of activity going on in other parts of the building, for a few precious minutes I had the entire fossil department, with the room dominated by the huge Tyrannosaurus Rex skeleton and the massive fossilised root-ball of an ancient tree, all to myself.

Just me, a dinosaur, an ancient tree, and cases full of Ammonites…

I was in absolute bliss, and with the minerals exhibit just a few paces away, I’ve found another place in which I could happily hide myself away for a very long time… and, if I stand still long enough, I might just fossilise enough to join the collection…

Anyway, if you are ever in the area, do yourself a favour and get yourself through those doors, and go and have a look at those great new galleries. If you’ve got any interest at all in the world around you, I really don’t think you’ll regret doing so, and I’m pretty sure that it’s all free to get in to as well, so what more could you possibly want...?