It’s been about a month in the making but I managed to get a day off (unfortunately Julie had to work) and I wanted to do something that was completely not work, so off to the Royal Ontario Museum.
Drove to Burlington and took the GO Train. It is takes the same time as driving and is cheaper. Total transit time: approx 2 hrs both ways.
- Driving: $16 in gas and $12 parking = $28
- GO Train + Transit: $5 driving to Burlington+ $16.60 Train + $5 TTC = $26.60
The subway is fun anyway. The Museum stop on the University line is decorated to it’s most famous attraction:
Each of the tunnel supports is decorated appropriately too. I first saw the Terracotta Warriors Exhibit. It was amazing. The $5 tour guide was well worth it. 2 200 years ago Qin Shi Huang conquered the six other rival Chinese kingdoms and declared himself the first emperor of China. He standardized the legal system across the seven kingdoms, created a unified currency system, built hundreds of palaces and then prepared for the afterlife by creating an army of clay replica soldiers (the terracotta warriors). A whole underground city (4 square kilometers buried 5 metres deep) was discovered by accident in 1976 with more than 8 000 soldiers in formation.
Once I had wandered around ancient China for a couple of hours I went upstairs to see a famous part of the ROM collection that I had yet to lay eyes on. Mounted in a frame is a section of a brick wall that was formerly decorating the palace of Nebuchadnezzar II. He’s the one mentioned in Jeremiah, II Kings, II Chronicles, Ezra, Nehemiah, Esther and Ezekiel.
What is amazing is the detail and the colour. In a part of the world where natural colouring was scarce to have bricks with such bright blues and yellows is quite remarkable.
The original glaze can be clearly seen on the bricks, and you are allowed to touch it (I still can’t believe it). Daniel himself would have walked right past this engraving in the palace wall.
Before leaving I noticed a new exhibit. Out of the Vaults features exhibits that the ROM has not had the room to show in the past but now can get out for the public to see. This one was about a clutch of Massospondylus dinosaur eggs that were found in South Africa. Click here to read more about the exhibit. Here’s an adult skeleton of a Massospondylus:
The eggs are significant because entact embryos were found within the eggs.
This leads scientists to believe that a baby one of these would look something like this:
Before you start thinking these things are cute, they eventually grow teeth like this:
The irony of it all comes at the end. After seeing the achievements of a despot emperor who was seeking to become immortal by building a city to be buried in, then other exhibits announcing the mighty works of man I paused under the rotunda which was built in the 1930s and decorated with a mosaic made with over a million pieces of fired glass. In explaining the purpose for the museum it quotes Job 37: 7 “That all men may know His works”
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