Sell-by date exceeded in Bloomsbury

I'm not much of a one for sell-by dates and use-by dates and all that. If food looks fresh and smells fresh then I'll have a go at it. I would draw the line at some bread we saw yesterday though because it was four thousand years old! To be fair, it didn't look all that appetising, a bit dry I thought, but there it was in a display case at the Petrie Museum of Egyptian Archeology.

If old bread doesn't turn you on, how about the oldest surviving garment in thee world. Five thousand years old and made from a very fine linen thread.  That's older than some of my odd socks I keep hanging on to in case the other half shows up.

If you can find this place, it's worth a visit. There are no great sarcophagi or statues, but loads and loads of smaller artefacts, some of them exquisite. It's the sheer antiquity of this stuff that impresses me - that people four and a half thousand years ago were obviously quite sophisticated. This stuff is three thousand years older than the Angl Saxon stuff we get excited about here and a lot of it is much more refined. Some of the stone carving and pottery and glassware is very very fine.
Here's some jewellery Kath liked. Tiny intricate ceramic shapes on a necklace.

As the museum is within the UCL there are students hanging about to explain things to you, and when we went there was a student seminar going on and I listened to one giving a very interesting talk about the religious significance of amulets.
The museum is free. Go take a look when you're in London.
Not a lot of changeover in Paddington basin. It's full as I write I think.

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