The front entrance to the world’s first University museum, free to all
“My cabinet of curiosities” is how the museum’s founder, Elias Ashmole, described the original collection he donated to the University of Oxford in 1677.
And what a cabinet of curiosities it has become! Spanning three wings and towering four stories, the museum hosts huge collections of archaeological specimens side by side with fine art. It has one of the best collections of Pre-Raphaelite paintings, majolica pottery, English silver, rare coins, book engravings and geological specimens of any museum. It even had the stuffed body of the last Dodo bird ever seen but, sadly, the bird decomposed before new protocols for preservation were developed, so that now all that remains is a claw and its head.
The archaeology department includes the bequest of Arthur Evans and so has an excellent collection of Greek and Minoan pottery. The department also has an extensive collection of antiquities from Ancient Egypt and the Sudan, and the museum hosts the Griffith Institute for the advancement of Egyptology.
Since I only had a couple of free hours to explore (I could happily spend weeks inside, browsing room after room) I decided to focus on the ancients and the tactile, beginning with the marble collection of the Earl of Arundel.
First, the women:
This is Minerva, Roman goddess of wisdom and sponsor of the arts. She sprang, fully armored, from her father, Jupiter’s head. That’s an unknown Roman lad and lady in attendance.
This piece is known as “The Wounded Amazon”. 
Missing all of those limbs and her poor head, she is definitely wounded. I love the draping of her gown.
Here we have “the headless muse”, thought to be Clio, the proclaimer of great deeds, Zeus’s historian daughter.
The foot, the foot! And her posture…
“Some say the Muses are nine: how careless!
Look, there’s Sappho too, from Lesbos, the tenth.” Plato
And look again! It’s the colossal head of Athena, the Greek version of fair Minerva. Athena, the Goddess of wisdom, courage, truth and justice.
What would a dash through antiquities be without a Sphinx?
AD 50-200
And as a theatre person, how could I not include this 1st century BC Greek tragedy mask?
Moving to Minoan Crete, we have two very important Snake Goddesses. AE 1106 
It is thought by some that they represent the Paleolithic tradition of honoring women, particularly the domesticity they shepherded so successfully.
We’ll end this brief collection of female figures with this disturbing Egyptian frieze carved in high relief.
It depicts Leda, wife of King Tyndaeus of Sparta, being raped by Zeus in the form of a swan. We’ve all heard that story.
It’s part of the normalization of rape culture, right? In any case, the two nymphs on her sides are holding eggs which symbolize the conception of her children, Helen of Troy, Clytemnestra, Castor and Pollux.
It seems fitting after this that we move along to the Boys:
Old Jupiter himself
Hercules, fighting the Nemean Lion. Off to the left you can see the missing upper body of the nymph, Nymea, who holds an oak wreath for the winner. Do we think it was the lion?
And here, gentle Eros, sleeping. His torch is down, however, which is not a good sign. It signifies death.
This next piece is pretty dramatic. We see the Trojan priest, Laocoon, and his sons fighting flesh eating snakes. No wonder so many people have Ophidiophobia (fear of snakes).
Pliny the Elder says this sculpture was made by three Rhodian sculptors: Hageandros, Athenodourous and Polypros, who were commissioned to create a warning. It is believed Laocoon had sex in the temple of Apollo- a big no no.
And here we find Apollo himself
the God of Learning, Truth and Music. He’s beautiful, isn’t he? He is. And look at that quiver for his arrows! So very Greek (even though this statue is Roman)
Speaking of phallic centric art? Get a look at this gentleman.
His name is Min.
Min is a Pre-dynastic Egyptian God, from 3300 BC, Temple of Koptos. This boy is huge. All that’s left of the penis he is holding is a stub but you get the idea. He is, of course, the God of Reproduction. Great feasts and orgiastic rites were held in his honor so that he could spread his semen around. People were worried about their harvests….
So, let’s end our little trek through the wonders of stone with this fabulous crocodile God, Sobek, who also cared about harvests. He is the chief God of the Fayum and his sculpture was taken from “The Labyrinth Pyramid” at Hawara.
Sobek is known as a “fluid” God. He is also Apotropaic, which means he keeps evil away. He protects the people, the Pharaohs, the Nile’s fertility, all of it.
I leave him to protect you, dear reader, and me, as we go about our lives. May your days and nights remain as fertile as you wish them to be, in whatever form that fertility may take.
Blessed Be.