September 15 was our big Berlin museums day, knocking off 4 or even 5 (depending on how you individuate museums): the Pergamon, the Neues, the Old National Gallery, the Panorama, and "The World of Heinrich Schliemann" at the James Simon gallery. All on Museums Island. All for 19€ per person, too.
The Pergamon is a large museum, a museum of large format stuff. The German archaeologists removed not just clay pots and tablets and statues and such, but whole temples and other buildings. Just keeping up with the Brits, you might say. The museum is under renovation presently, and its most famous holdings are closed until 2025. Fortunately, we had visited the Pergamon before, in 2012. See my post from then for a look at that for which this big format museum is most famous. We had also visited Pergamum itself, the ancient city in Turkey, and blogged about it too, in 2010. And also Miletus, too, parts of which now reside in Berlin.
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The Kaiser and the Sultan of Ottoman Turkey were close personal
buds in the later 19th century, and thus it was open season for
German archaeologists and adventurers throughout Asia Minor;
also, the Ottoman Empire was the "sick man of Europe" and looking
for some help; compare Britain's relationship with Greece... |
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| The Official Story; "partage"?! |
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| Helpful model of ancient Babylon |
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Including the Temple of Marduk, thought to have been the
"Tower of Babel" |
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Now entering the processional road to the great hall in later
Babylon; just 100m of the 250m collected |
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| Detail |
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| Spare parts; actual crate used for transporting... |
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| Definitely will be on the quiz |
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Cast of the Code of Hammurabi; source
of all the "thou shalt nots" |
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| Impressive gold work |
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| More monumental stuff |
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| And you thought angels were strictly Christian |
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"You've come a long way, baby," except in the US, where
Republicans would like to set the clock back a few millennia |
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The smaller entry gate; the larger one (see model) was too large
to fit |
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| Scale in the throne room |
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| Helpful model of what you've been walking and looking at |
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Shazam! You pass through the gate and you're in Roman Miletus;
the signage here helpfully notes that 60% of the facade here is
original, the highest percentage of anything in the museum (!) |
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Nice mosaic...a door off to the right leads then to the now-closed
hall of Pergamon; see our 2012 post for pix of this |
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My north German sushi...raw herring and salad...the waiter asked
whether I understood what I was ordering..."Ach, ja, ja, ich
verstehe..." |
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| Vicki's pizza |
