London June 2017 Day 10 – An afternoon in the British Museum

In the morning we went to Belmont Hall in Harrow again for the Open Door Coffee Morning to enjoy tea, homemade scones and great conversation with lovely people. On our way there by (overground) Metropolitan Line tube we could see black smoke going up from Grenfell Tower which had burnt the night before leaving 71 people dead.

In the afternoon the LCM summer school group made an excursion to the British Museum to see items which had to do with the contents of the Bible. Our guide was Clive Anderson, one of the authors of the book “Through the British Museum with the Bible”.

Clive had many impressive stories to tell, but the one which particularly stuck in my mind was that of Livia Drusilla (58 BC – 29 AD), wife of Emperor Augustus and mother, grandmother etc. of other Roman Emperors – and fashion icon of her time, even after her death.

It was interesting to hear that Livia was indirectly mentioned in the Bible, though her name never appears there. Both Apostles Peter (1 Peter 3:3) and Paul (1 Timothy 2:9) are telling Christian women to dress modestly and not to wear plaited (or “broided”) hair. The reason for this was that Livia used to wear a very elaborate hairstyle formed of many plaits, and women of the time were trying to copy this hairstyle. This in itself certainly wouldn’t have been much of an issue in the Christian community, if not Emperor Claudius, her grandson, had elevated Livia to the state of a goddess after her death, so that copying her fashion style could be seen as a form of worship. At this point it became tricky for the Christian women, of course.

To read more about that day in summer school, please visit the LCM blog.