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Berlin, Germany

So we have finally done a cultural museum. Berlin is known for its ‘Museum Island’ which houses 5 Museums and some fantastic early Roman, Greek, Eastern and Egyptian collections to name a few. These areas interest us so we had planned to make Berlin our cultural visit city.

It was raining lightly but steadily today so after a nice home cooked breakfast of bio egg and bacon of very modest non buffett sized portions, followed by toast with my absolute favourite spread – dried plum reconstituted jam (found at the supermarket last night) we set off for our first museum visit.

By the time we arrived there was only a few hours till closing so we chose the Egyptian museum as there was less on our list to see there than some of the others. I was really looking forward to seeing the Nefertiti bust which they have (1340 BC) and when I saw “no photos” in the Egyptian wing my heart sank so I have taken a picture of the poster instead!

There are a number of statues and carved plaques of Nefertiti and her husband and children but the bust is the only coloured one. She was a non royal by birth and known for her fine beauty. Even her name means “of exceptional beauty that has arrived”. She really was lovely – very modern looking I thought and serene and graceful. The bust was done of her in more mature years and she clearly held her looks well. It was so realistic and life size (and beautiful) that you couldn’t help but keep looking at her. The Egyptians seemed in general a petite race back then going by their statues, engravings, and mummies!

There were lots of interesting ancient Egyptian displays including a few papyrus. Further along I was allowed to snap a cosmetics bag and bottles – thousands of years old and yet clearly important – my kind of women LOL and some beautiful glass works which to me could have been modern, not centuries old.

Another lovely piece was the rare gold hat – weighing only 400 grams yet look at its size at 88cm tall! The Berlin hat dates back to 1000 BC and they think it was used as part of sun cult ceremonies in the Bronze Age. Of interest is the inscribing which has complex and correct astromony details on it so they think that the wearers would have known how to predict seasons etc and planting times. There are only 4 of these in existence in the world.

They also had a lot of early German artifacts such as tools etc found in the surrounding areas and a neat wooden fertility statue with his and her interlocking parts used for ceremonies!

You get a free audio guide at the museum which is very good and informative – if we had listened to every station I think we would have been there all day! At closing time we left tired and amazed at the skills and lives of peoples past.

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