British Library/British Museum UPDATED

I've always wanted to visit the British Library and had never had a chance previously.  This is my third visit to London, so I guess the third time really is the charm!  Though I do post about important libraries and museums, most of my posts on this "mathsab" blog are about mathematicians and are for use as reference for my students.  I was so excited to be at the British Museum and British Library, however, and was excited for so many reasons, that I've let this post become very personal.  I think my liberal arts students will be OK with that - seeing a bit of music and literature and archaeology and geography - and also seeing that I too am interested in subjects beyond mathematics.

Precious books and permission to access them!  Wahoo!

I love the inscription at the top of the card.  I am here to do research, but I know I will find inspiration and enjoyment.  In fact, that has already begun!  The library itself is just jaw-droppingly beautiful, and, among other things, it has a very large exhibition room where anyone can wander in and see treasures from many fields: music, science, literature, geography, etc.  I'll give a visual tour of the library and exhibitions first and then zoom in on what it was the drew me here very specifically.

The Terrace Restaurant

The following photographs are but the smallest sample of what is contained in the exhibition rooms.

God is Our Refuge (Mozart, age 9)

Earliest known printed world map to show America (an extension of Asia)

Jane Austen's writing desk with a letter to her brother Frank on top

Some of the Angria juvenilia by Charlotte Bronte

The Gondal Poems by Emily Bronte

 Those of you who know me well are probably surprised I was capable of taking pictures of the above Bronte works rather than fainting dead away from excitement!  Are you kidding me?!  Emily Bronte's poetry in her own hand!  (I can't help but think how upset Emily was when her sister Charlotte got into her things and discovered these poems.  Emily was so private, yet here this is on display for all the world to see  .  .  .  of course they had ended up publishing after that episode, so  .  .  .)

 And above we have the philatelic collections, and below we have books, books, BOOKS!!!

OK, so certainly all of the above was way more than enough to draw me here!  But I am actually traveling on sabbatical to study The Sorcerer Mathematicians of the Renaissance, and I was here for Dee, John Dee.

I wish I could show pictures here of this scroll unrolled.  I may be able to in a later post; I just need to write the permissions department at the library and get an OK first.  It contains the genealogies of John Dee and Queen Elizabeth I (hence their relationship to each other, which Dee was trying to promote as he sought position at court), and these lines of descent go all the way back to King Arthur and his father King Uther Pendragon!  The scroll is filled with beautiful calligraphy, paintings of heraldic shields, and a self-portrait by Dee (thought to be the only extant contemporary likeness of him).  I touched and handled this scroll, hand-drawn in the 16th century by John Dee.  I know I'm repeating myself, but I can't stress strongly enough how surprised I was to be able to access this scroll.  Dee has become a very popular cult/occult figure, and this scroll is well over 400 years old.  It just goes to show you what kinds of doors can open to a math professor on sabbatical, and I am humbled and privileged in this!

*****

After that I almost can't write about anything else, but later that evening I also went to the British Museum.  Here too the focus was Dee.  I had already seen Dee's items on display at the Royal College of Physicians four years ago, but I wanted to see them in their usual home - different display, might hit me differently, who knows.  I'm going to wait to share pictures of that display, but I will share other images of and from the British Museum. 

King Nebuchadnezzar II's Babylon

Mummies

I don't usually spend too much time in the Egyptian section.  It's amazing and everything, but the history goes back so many thousands of years that my brain can't process it, and I end up feeling like I've fallen into a black hole!

I do always gravitate to two items when I am at the British Museum: The Rosetta Stone and the Elgin Marbles.  In the first picture below I'm actually wearing a shirt that I just bought that has the Rosetta Stone on it, but the lighting is such that you'll just have to take my word for it.  (I don't normally buy souvenirs, but for this I made an exception!  It'll be a good shirt to wear in my classroom when I'm teaching multiplication with Egyptian numerals!)

 OK, I know some of you do read Greek.  How ya doin' with the lower script in the image below?

 Elgin Marbles:

Why did I not realize that the actual original of the Royal Game of Ur would be on display?  This was another moment of nearly fainting.

The Babylonian tablet below contains directions for the game - the earliest known set of directions for a board game - and it was museum curator Dr. Irving Finkel who painstakingly translated the directions and therefore revived this once universal game!

In the following YouTube Dr. Finkel talks a little bit about this discovery and translation.  He is a hero of mine, and I was keeping my eyes open hoping to see him at the British Museum!  (But then I really would have fainted - though only after getting a selfie with him!)

And may I just say, DR. FINKEL, SIR, YOU ROCK!!!!

OK, I don't know where to go from there, so I'll stop.  That was an awful lot of excitement in one day!  I'm posting this on my fourth day, and I have no idea how I'm going to keep up with this!  There is just too much awesome stuff!

Nine Men's Morris Game

My family and I are gamers, and I love classic games like Chess, Go, Backgammon and Nine Men's Morris, so at the very beginning of my trip when I was visiting Jedburgh Abbey in Scotland and I saw an archaeological exhibition of a Nine Men's Morris game found at the site, I took a picture of it just for my own self  .  .  .

And then, I saw another Nine Men's Morris board at the home of Sir Isaac Newton in Woolsthorpe - not original, of course, but there it was in the living room!

The day after my arrival in London I went to a math lecture on Turing and von Neumann at the Museum of London, and I saw another Nine Men's Morris Board that had been excavated from early times in London.  I am shocked as I go through my pictures tonight to see I didn't take a photograph of it, but in it's place I'll post this picture from that museum of dice from centuries ago in London - just to illustrate how games have always played an important role in human culture.

Then yesterday I was at Hampton Court Palace, and in the Great Waiting Chamber from the Tudor Era, what did I see but another Nine Men's Morris game in the midst of this glorious splendour!

And then today I was in the Tower of London, and there was Nine Men's Morris again in the room set up as a replica of that of Kind Edward I.

There is no real relationship here to the math history I'm studying for my sabbatical and this game, BUT when parents of young children ask me (as happens so often!) what they can best do to help their kids be ready to be solid in mathematics, I always encourage them to play strategy games with their kids.  Such games are all about problem-solving and creative thinking, which is so necessary in mathematics - and by "mathematics" I don't mean merely arithmetic and number crunching - I mean solution and proof and Mathematics.

It's also the case that I choose a different strategy game every semester for my math tutor training sessions - a game that I ask the tutors to focus on all semester to see if they can find any mathematical principles relating to it that could ensure a win for them every time or at least an advantage. It's a way of getting them to stretch their "mathematical muscles" outside the classroom and more flexibly, in broader context.  Nine Men's Morris may need to be my next game pick for tutor training.

Anyway, Nine Men's Morris keeps popping up everywhere I look, so it gets a post.  Now I'm eager to pull out my Nine Men's Morris board when I get home so that I can play it again.  It's been a long time, but it's clearly a classic that I need to revisit!!

LATER ADDITION:

And yet another one!  This time it isn't in a museum but in a game store in Heidelberg, Germany.

And yet again another one!  This one was in my stop after Heidelberg - Gottingen, Germany!

AND EIGHT YEARS LATER (May 2024) 

I continue tracking down historic mathematicians and keeping an eye out for classic games as I do. While staying at a B&B in Venice I came across a book: 111 Places in Venice that You Must Not Miss. In it was a page on two Nine Men's Morris carvings to be found in the city, and so off I went to hunt for them.

Despite the information in the book, they were not easy to find, but the hunt was fun and worthwhile. The first one is carved into a bench just to the left of the entrance of Scuola Grande di San Rocco. The trouble with it being on a bench is that people sit on benches. Thankfully, the carving was peeking out to the side of someone's behind - yes, I was a little less observant than I usually am of personal space, and I just pointed to it and asked graciously if they would move so I could get a picture. (I will do almost anything in search of "games in the wild.")

It's just to the left of the lady with the pink purse. The guy sitting on the left with the phone had been sitting partly on the gameboard and kindly moved for me. It was clear from our conversation that someone else had asked him to move earlier, so, obviously, I am not the only "game hunter" out there.

This one at least had pretty specific directions in the book but for the second one, all I knew was that it was on the first floor (European "first floor" = American "second floor") of a shopping center: Fondaco dei Tedeschi. That's a pretty big area, so this one was quite a search, but I persevered and found it behind a display of clothing. I'm sure the store owner was amused (not). Either way, it made me very happy!

Pushing my way through this little display of clothes, I found:

It looks like this is two games in one. I'll update this when I recall the other game I have in mind. I want to say "Fox and Geese," but I don't think that's it:

Another update - in Madrid in April 2025, I saw another representation of Nine Men's Morris on a tote bag. I left my family behind, saying, "I have a picture I need to take; I'll be back." And I took off running after this woman. (I need a tote bag like this one!)

This game shows up everywhere - in ancient carvings, old (but not ancient) carvings, medieval game boards, modern board games, and modern tote bags. It is definitely a game with staying power.

Watch for further updates - with further travels may come further discoveries!