So when I last left you ...

The British Museum is itself a relic of the UK's now shrinking empire. It is no exaggeration to say that the Brits, lovely as they are, gained this ENORMOUS amount of booty by force and intimidation. (Alright, with a bit of trade and negotiation mixed in as well, but when you have force and intimidation waiting in the wings, what negotiations are truly fair?)

But even knowing how this assembly of wonders came together, it's hard not to be grateful that it is here and in remarkable shape. The military men who seized these objects most often believed that they were protecting history from the local populace (who were treating their antiquities like scrap). This is one occasion when familiarity indeed bred a level of contempt. At least that's what the British would have us believe.

So here are a few of the pictures that I took while skipping among history's detritus. Photography fails to encapsulate much of the splendor of the experience, but words alone do even less.