The Daidoumenos of Vaison is a Roman marble statue of an ancient Greek athlete. Found at Vaison, a Roman town in Southern France, this beautiful piece is at the British Museum (because the Louvre refused to buy it for its ‘unreasonable price’!). The statue is a Roman copy of a Greek original in bronze. Just think for a second about how much the Romans learnt from the Greeks… After conquering their lands, they brought back home all their most beautiful artworks and took inspiration from them. Clearly, they couldn’t forget the Daidoumenos, a sculpture by one of the most famous artists of Classical Greece, Polykleitos.
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This post is also available in Italian!
In ancient Greek society people carefully followed the social rules of good behaviour. Women had to be good mothers. Kids and youths went to school, to the gym and were trained to be brave warriors. The elder ones inspired the new generations with their wise advice. And everyone prayed to the gods during the religious festivities. There was a time though, when almost everything was allowed and when social rules of good behaviour could be forgotten: the symposium. Museums are filled with vases showing symposiasts having fun and playing, precisely because the Greeks, like the Egyptians, the Mesopotamians, the Chinese and the Anglo-Saxons, often buried their dead with games (or scenes of games), in order to allow them to have fun during their afterlife.
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Just a heads up: things in bold might be answers to bonus questions on your Fun & Games hunt!
The First ever Version in Italian will be on Friday April 3rd at 5.30 pm.
You can also read this blog in Italian here!
From sculptures to pottery, from paintings to temples, mythology is a broad topic in ancient Greek art and architecture. The Parthenon architecture, one of the most famous ancient complexes of all times, is a striking example of how the ancient Greeks took inspiration from their classical mythology to make sense of the real world.
Avviso veloce: alcune delle informazioni in grassetto potrebbero essere risposte a domande bonus nella tua caccia Divertimento e Giochi, la cui Prima Verisione in Italiano, sarà Venerdì 3 Aprile alle 17.30.
Da sculture e vasi, ad affreschi e templi, la mitologia popola quasi l’intera produzione artistica greca. Il Partenone, uno dei più famosi complessi architettonici di tutti i tempi, rappresenta un lampante esempio di come i Greci si lasciassero ispirare dai propri racconti mitologici per dare un senso al mondo che li circondava.
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Introducing our London KidPack!
We are very excited to announce the arrival of our new London KidPack! Joining our ever-successful Paris KidPack, it is full of fun activities, puzzles and creative fun. Add one as a bonus after a family treasure hunt at any of our three London museums, and keep the discovery going!
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Our final Love Hunt Blog before Valentine’s Day is all about its chubby little mascot: Cupid. Check out the whole series here, here and here! However our little cherub has a much more storied past, before he was reduced to selling cards and chocolates. Originally Eros in Greek, the God of Love, in some versions he is one of the oldest forces in the universe, predated only by Chaos and Gaia (Earth).
Most commonly though the Romans knew little Cupid as the son of Venus, Goddess of beauty. Her husband was Vulcan, but Cupid’s father is Mars, God of War, naughty! (This might be useful on your hunt!)
Love Hunt: The Ain Sakhri Lovers
Today for our third Love Hunt blog we have a very special object. The oldest and most mysterious object on our Love Hunt: The Ain Sakhri Lovers. Possibly the oldest porn in the world!
This statue is the oldest known representation in the world of two people making love. Discovered in the Ain Sakhri caves near Bethlehem, it dates back around 11,000 years. At this time, humans were only just learning how to move from hunter-gathering to farming. The Natufian people of the Middle East who made this sculpture we’re some of the first to begin to domesticate sheep and goats, alongside their hunting dogs for catching deer.
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Thetis and Peleus – Wedding of the Ages
Welcome to our second Love Hunt blog (see the first here). Read up on the sauciest stories from antiquity and get yourselves some bonus points!
Welcome to the tale of the grandest wedding of the Greek world. Maybe not the loveliest wedding but definitely the most eventful. Full of drama, scandal and family feuds, like all good weddings!
Read MoreLove Hunt: Priapus
Welcome to our new blog series, highlighting the great treasures in our British Museum Love Hunt. Discover some of the most famous lovers in history: Thetis and Peleus, The Ain Sakhri Lovers and Cupid and Psyche. This upright fellow has become a bit of a mascot for our Love Hunt at the British Museum. This…ahem, impressive piece has a hilarious and surprisingly stories history behind it.
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Looking for a special gift for a special person? Have friends or family going to London or Paris at Easter, this summer or who may live there? Why not offer up a museum treasure hunt, making explorers of them for some maverick museum fun!
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MEETING POINT
Your first task will be to find our meeting point within the British Museum’s Great Court lobby. If entering the museum from the main entrance on Great Russell St, the circular Information Desk is to the right (within the Great Court); we’ll meet behind the Info Desk, at the Roman equestrian prince statue (photo herewith). Your THATBrit Rep will have a white canvas THATMuse tote.
TOOLS
Please be sure to have freshly charged batteries in your phone or camera. Please visit the cloak room &/or toilet before our meeting time.
ROLES
- Navigator (good with a map)
- Scribe (who’s got the best penmanship?)
- Reader (the lawyerly type who’ll catch bonus questions embedded in the treasure text)
- Organiser (who’ll keep an eye on the clock and make sure you’re in order) and of course the photographer. Some of these roles can overlap, of course.
YOUR THATMUSE MISSION
Photo your team in front of as many pieces of THATBrit Treasures as possible within the given amount of time (90 mins to 2 hrs.)
With each treasure photo you’ll earn 20 game points (about 500 game points), however, with careful reading you could pick more than 1000 bonus THATMuse points. There are several ways to do this. Our bonus questions fall into three key categories:
– Scrutiny (looking more carefully at the piece or surrounding rooms)
– Silliness (willing to trot like a Tang horse for bonus points?)
– Knowledge (All of these questions can be answered within another piece of treasure text, within the hunt)
There is also an artistic challenge & Letter Scramble spelling out your prize treasure with THATMuse Letters embedded in the text, both worth 100 bonus THATMuse points! We’ve intentionally provided more treasure text & fun than you could read about within the given time in the hope that you’ll want to return or extend your visit (& to ensure strategy!)
THATMuse is entirely independent of the British Museum as such, we unfortunately have no control of rooms they close off (which changes within the day)
RULES
(in addition to photographing your team in front of as many pieces of treasure as possible)
- Teams must stay together at all times, must not run, jump or shout.
- No external help… If seen speaking to a tourist-in-the-know or BM staff you’re automatically eliminated; Likewise, no googling the Mesopotamians, no GPS-ing where the Greeks are, or anything other than your hunt & map… No phoning your Egyptologist Aunt for help, either!
- Please be sure you have one (1) Master Copy with all the answers and only use one (1) camera/phone (to facilitate score tallying). In respect to Museum policy please mute your phones & no flash photography.
- Must meet back at starting point (X on your map) at the precise time agreed. Each minute late merits 10 negative points, per minute (!!) There are sometimes strategical reasons to be late, but attention (!!): if you’re more than 10 mins late you’re ousted!
For small doses of Museum/Art Trivia, tune in (share or contribute your own!) to Twitter (@THAT_Muse_) and FB page for daily posted #THATMuseFacts! Or just follow us to see fun #THATMuse hunting snaps!
SEKHMET THE DESTROYER
Sekhmet was a fierce warrior goddess, protector of the pharaohs and daughter of the sun god Ra. She was the goddess of destruction and purging, and was worshipped in Memphis as ‘the destroyer’. Her name means, “the (one who is) powerful or mighty” but her nicknames include “(One) Before Whom Evil Trembles”, “Mistress of Dread”, “Lady of Slaughter” and “She Who Mauls”–sounds like a friendly lady. Pretty awesome nicknames, huh? Might be a good source of inspiration for coming up with your next THATMuse team name, right?
She’s often depicted as half woman/half lioness (Incidentally, can you think of any other gods and goddesses who also have animal features, perhaps featured on the THATMuse blog? Hint: his name begins with an H and he has the head of a hawk). Sekhmet was closely associated with the desert, and therefore often shown with a sun disk on her head.
In one myth, she was sent to earth to destroy her dad’s, Ra, enemies but she grew so bloodthirsty she almost killed off everyone—to stop her, Ra poured out a mass amount of beer stained red (with pomegranate juice) tricking Sekhmet into thinking it was blood. She drank so much of the red beer and became so drunk that she gave up killing people and went back sleepily and peacefully to Ra. When she awoke from her drunken stupor, the first thing she saw was Ptah—the god of creation, and fell instantly in love with him.
Every year there was a festival to honor Sekhmet, where Egyptians would get completely black-out drunk to imitate her. (Is it just me, or does this festival sound like a good excuse to throw a party?) Mankind also had to constantly appease her with offerings to abate her wrath. Egyptologists think that Amenhotep III built a temple with over 700 statues to her so that people could honor her every day of the year with a different statue. Hence part of the reason why statues of her abound: say hello to this bloodthirsty babe at the Louvre and the British Museum, and also at the Met and the Vatican (Don’t THATMet or THATVat have a ring to them?!)
