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When I was ten years old, my parents took my brothers and I along on six week trip to Europe. The influence of that trip could well have planted the seeds that led me to return to live in Europe for good. In exile. In love.
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The first stop of the trip was in London, after the adventure of flying for the first time across the Atlantic Ocean, on a Boeing 707, if my memory serves me correctly. We stayed in a hotel on Russell Square which figured in that famous early travel book : Europe On Five Dollars A Day. The British Museum was practically next door.
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So it was not without some considerable nostalgia that I went back to the British Museum in February. The Elgin Marbles from the Parthenon, and the Rosetta Stone of course are perhaps the "biggest" attractions there, but between them lies a long room dedicated to the bas relief lion hunt scenes from the Assyrian palace at Nineveh, in what today is the tragic land of Iraq. For me these sculptures are some of the saddest and most moving artwork I've ever come across anywhere. They date from over 600 years BC, during the realm of King Ashurbanipal, but already they foreshadowed the devastatingly arrogant vision of man regarding the natural world around him, which has grown to epic proportions today.
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The power of these images is such, when one beholds them in the reverent quiet of the museum in their raw, rich stone, that one could almost imagine warning signs posted at the entrance to the room, like the ones we sometimes see on internet news sites to the effect of : "Warning; the images that follow are graphic in nature, viewer discretion is advised", or "Danger, not for the faint of heart".
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When the last lion in the wild has been killed, we will at least still have these sculptures to help us remember the glory of such beasts, and the brutal stupidity of man, who would slaughter them for sport. Sculptures executed by an incredibly talented artist, or artists, who sadly remain anonymous to us today. How I would have loved to watch them at work over these large stone panels. One senses a strong degree of sympathy between the artist and the dying lions.
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Have you been to the British Museum ? If yes, did you stop for a moment in the lion king's realm ?
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