{"id":8548,"date":"2003-05-26T22:18:17","date_gmt":"2003-05-27T04:18:17","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.wend.ca\/?p=8548"},"modified":"2020-06-19T22:49:41","modified_gmt":"2020-06-20T02:49:41","slug":"museum-of-antiquities-and-hadrians-wall","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/wend.ca\/?p=8548","title":{"rendered":"Museum of Antiquities and Hadrian’s Wall"},"content":{"rendered":"

After getting coffee and our fill of architecture we headed to the Museum of Antiquities, an easy landmark to find because the University of Newcastle upon Tyne sticks out above all else. At the museum you can learn about Newcastle’s 10,000 years of history; archaeology is well known and evidently successful in Newcastle.<\/p>\n

We came here in search of information on Hadrian’s Wall and as an added bonus found out many interesting things about Newcastle itself. Two things that stuck out amongst all others were a presentation on Roman Mithraism<\/a> and a display of items found in the Leazes Park Lake when it was drained and 8,000 tonnes of silt removed as part of a park restoration.<\/p>\n

Roman Mithraism:<\/strong> In the middle of the museum is a little shrine area where you can site and watch a multimedia presentation on the history of Mithras. The Roman army first encountered the cult of Mithras in Persia during the reign of the emperor Nero although its origins can be traced back to India in 1400 BC. Mithraism first appealed to slaves and to freedmen but because the cult’s main emphasis is on truth, honour, courage, and discipline, it soon became a religion popular amongst soldiers and traders. In the presentation you are taken though a Mithras ritual. It costs 20 pence to see the presentation and it is worth it.<\/p>\n

Scraping the Bottom: Finds From Leazes Park Lake<\/strong> is the name of the display showing a selection of 200 items found in Newcastle’s oldest lake. Interesting items include a very ornamented shoe, toy boats, bottles, lighters, various bottles from all eras, coins, toy soldiers from all eras, etc. Seeing all these items together made me realize that the importance of the lake is not diminished by time; in other words, the value that it had to someone in the 1990s is the same value that it had to someone in the 1850s.<\/p>\n