This week The Wall Street Journal ran my story about the adored and adorable Pitt Rivers museum of ethnography and world archeology in Oxford, England (as opposed, I guess, to Oxford, Mississippi). You can read it here. For length, they did cut an anecdote about my first visit:
It was 2002, and I was just starting a year of graduate management studies at Oxford University. My friend Roland, an Egyptologist in my college whom I’d met “in hall” (i.e., at one of the nightly formal, gowns-required dinners that passes for normal mealtime at Oxford), toured me around the museum’s labyrinth of curiously labeled curio cabinets: “Snuff-Taking Equipment,” “Amulets, Cures and Charms,” and “Treatment of Dead Enemies,” where I came nose to nose with some shrunken human heads.
Examining the case marked “Origins of Writing,” we were approached by a cheerful, clipboard-wielding volunteer who wanted to record our feedback. I remember Roland, who was fluent in more dead languages than living ones, remarking: “Oh, this place is wonderful! But I’m afraid I do have to tell you: this cuneiform tablet is upside down.” The docent flushed; I laughed. To a mere mortal, this is like noticing that a Japanese flag is hanging backward. But that’s Roland for you.
Read “Where Shrunken Heads are a Big Attraction” in it’s entirety.
This week The Wall Street Journal ran my story about the adored and adorable Pitt Rivers museum of ethnography and world archeology in Oxford, England (as opposed, I guess, to Oxford, Mississippi). You can read it here. For length, they did cut an anecdote about my first visit:
It was 2002, and I was just starting a year of graduate management studies at Oxford University. My friend Roland, an Egyptologist in my college whom I’d met “in hall” (i.e., at one of the nightly formal, gowns-required dinners that passes for normal mealtime at Oxford), toured me around the museum’s labyrinth of curiously labeled curio cabinets: “Snuff-Taking Equipment,” “Amulets, Cures and Charms,” and “Treatment of Dead Enemies,” where I came nose to nose with some shrunken human heads.
Examining the case marked “Origins of Writing,” we were approached by a cheerful, clipboard-wielding volunteer who wanted to record our feedback. I remember Roland, who was fluent in more dead languages than living ones, remarking: “Oh, this place is wonderful! But I’m afraid I do have to tell you: this cuneiform tablet is upside down.” The docent flushed; I laughed. To a mere mortal, this is like noticing that a Japanese flag is hanging backward. But that’s Roland for you.
Read “Where Shrunken Heads are a Big Attraction” in it’s entirety.
This week The Wall Street Journal ran my story about the adored and adorable Pitt Rivers museum of ethnography and world archeology in Oxford, England (as opposed, I guess, to Oxford, Mississippi). You can read it here. For length, they did cut an anecdote about my first visit:
It was 2002, and I was just starting a year of graduate management studies at Oxford University. My friend Roland, an Egyptologist in my college whom I’d met “in hall” (i.e., at one of the nightly formal, gowns-required dinners that passes for normal mealtime at Oxford), toured me around the museum’s labyrinth of curiously labeled curio cabinets: “Snuff-Taking Equipment,” “Amulets, Cures and Charms,” and “Treatment of Dead Enemies,” where I came nose to nose with some shrunken human heads.
Examining the case marked “Origins of Writing,” we were approached by a cheerful, clipboard-wielding volunteer who wanted to record our feedback. I remember Roland, who was fluent in more dead languages than living ones, remarking: “Oh, this place is wonderful! But I’m afraid I do have to tell you: this cuneiform tablet is upside down.” The docent flushed; I laughed. To a mere mortal, this is like noticing that a Japanese flag is hanging backward. But that’s Roland for you.
Read “Where Shrunken Heads are a Big Attraction” in it’s entirety.
This week The Wall Street Journal ran my story about the adored and adorable Pitt Rivers museum of ethnography and world archeology in Oxford, England (as opposed, I guess, to Oxford, Mississippi). You can read it here. For length, they did cut an anecdote about my first visit:
It was 2002, and I was just starting a year of graduate management studies at Oxford University. My friend Roland, an Egyptologist in my college whom I’d met “in hall” (i.e., at one of the nightly formal, gowns-required dinners that passes for normal mealtime at Oxford), toured me around the museum’s labyrinth of curiously labeled curio cabinets: “Snuff-Taking Equipment,” “Amulets, Cures and Charms,” and “Treatment of Dead Enemies,” where I came nose to nose with some shrunken human heads.
Examining the case marked “Origins of Writing,” we were approached by a cheerful, clipboard-wielding volunteer who wanted to record our feedback. I remember Roland, who was fluent in more dead languages than living ones, remarking: “Oh, this place is wonderful! But I’m afraid I do have to tell you: this cuneiform tablet is upside down.” The docent flushed; I laughed. To a mere mortal, this is like noticing that a Japanese flag is hanging backward. But that’s Roland for you.
Read “Where Shrunken Heads are a Big Attraction” in it’s entirety.
This week The Wall Street Journal ran my story about the adored and adorable Pitt Rivers museum of ethnography and world archeology in Oxford, England (as opposed, I guess, to Oxford, Mississippi). You can read it here. For length, they did cut an anecdote about my first visit:
It was 2002, and I was just starting a year of graduate management studies at Oxford University. My friend Roland, an Egyptologist in my college whom I’d met “in hall” (i.e., at one of the nightly formal, gowns-required dinners that passes for normal mealtime at Oxford), toured me around the museum’s labyrinth of curiously labeled curio cabinets: “Snuff-Taking Equipment,” “Amulets, Cures and Charms,” and “Treatment of Dead Enemies,” where I came nose to nose with some shrunken human heads.
Examining the case marked “Origins of Writing,” we were approached by a cheerful, clipboard-wielding volunteer who wanted to record our feedback. I remember Roland, who was fluent in more dead languages than living ones, remarking: “Oh, this place is wonderful! But I’m afraid I do have to tell you: this cuneiform tablet is upside down.” The docent flushed; I laughed. To a mere mortal, this is like noticing that a Japanese flag is hanging backward. But that’s Roland for you.
Read “Where Shrunken Heads are a Big Attraction” in it’s entirety.
This week The Wall Street Journal ran my story about the adored and adorable Pitt Rivers museum of ethnography and world archeology in Oxford, England (as opposed, I guess, to Oxford, Mississippi). You can read it here. For length, they did cut an anecdote about my first visit:
It was 2002, and I was just starting a year of graduate management studies at Oxford University. My friend Roland, an Egyptologist in my college whom I’d met “in hall” (i.e., at one of the nightly formal, gowns-required dinners that passes for normal mealtime at Oxford), toured me around the museum’s labyrinth of curiously labeled curio cabinets: “Snuff-Taking Equipment,” “Amulets, Cures and Charms,” and “Treatment of Dead Enemies,” where I came nose to nose with some shrunken human heads.
Examining the case marked “Origins of Writing,” we were approached by a cheerful, clipboard-wielding volunteer who wanted to record our feedback. I remember Roland, who was fluent in more dead languages than living ones, remarking: “Oh, this place is wonderful! But I’m afraid I do have to tell you: this cuneiform tablet is upside down.” The docent flushed; I laughed. To a mere mortal, this is like noticing that a Japanese flag is hanging backward. But that’s Roland for you.
Read “Where Shrunken Heads are a Big Attraction” in it’s entirety.
This week The Wall Street Journal ran my story about the adored and adorable Pitt Rivers museum of ethnography and world archeology in Oxford, England (as opposed, I guess, to Oxford, Mississippi). You can read it here. For length, they did cut an anecdote about my first visit:
It was 2002, and I was just starting a year of graduate management studies at Oxford University. My friend Roland, an Egyptologist in my college whom I’d met “in hall” (i.e., at one of the nightly formal, gowns-required dinners that passes for normal mealtime at Oxford), toured me around the museum’s labyrinth of curiously labeled curio cabinets: “Snuff-Taking Equipment,” “Amulets, Cures and Charms,” and “Treatment of Dead Enemies,” where I came nose to nose with some shrunken human heads.
Examining the case marked “Origins of Writing,” we were approached by a cheerful, clipboard-wielding volunteer who wanted to record our feedback. I remember Roland, who was fluent in more dead languages than living ones, remarking: “Oh, this place is wonderful! But I’m afraid I do have to tell you: this cuneiform tablet is upside down.” The docent flushed; I laughed. To a mere mortal, this is like noticing that a Japanese flag is hanging backward. But that’s Roland for you.
Read “Where Shrunken Heads are a Big Attraction” in it’s entirety.
Jeremy Hildreth
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