Gods to Apollo 11
cuneiform script from Mesopotamia, describing how men should react to a lunar eclipse: by banging drums and singing funeral songs to fend of evil spirits. There’s a finely wroughtht Islamic astrolabe of the thirteenth centuryntury with a Moon phase indicator. In Islam,slam, as in Christianity and Judaism, the moon and its phases has a highly practicalcal place in human affairs: it determines mines when festivals are held.
Our lives have been deterermined by the lunar calendar as well as the solar one from our earliest history. Indeed there’s a statue of Iah, one of the moon gods of Egypt: apparently he lost five days of f moonlight in a dice game with ith the god Thoth. And if you add those five days to the lunar calenalendar you end up with 365 ddaaysys. . Bingo.
There’s a section on the Moon and Medicine (including an apothecary’s sign of a crescent moon) which discusses whether the moon affects mental hhealth — recalled by the term lulunatic. Disappointingly we’re told the jury is still out. UseUsefully, the displays interss pp ee rs e s c i e n c e w i t h the apapplication of it. So we get aan account of the effect oof the moon on tides, next to astrolabes and the navigational instrumments which are someththing of a house speciality in GGreenwich.
TheThere’s a discussion of the colour of moonlight next to a choice sseries of moonlit scenes including tthhoose by Constable and Turner: hauntehaunted and mysterious. The attempts to ddescribe the moon are related to the development of telescopes, starting with those of Thomas Harriot and Galileo. And the observations he revealed had profound implications for theology and our place in the universe. The earliest moon portraits in pastel, by John Russell, are beautiful. So too are the early daguerreotypes: lunar photography was appropriated for popular science early on.
What’s evident is that our relationship with the moon says everything about us. Science fiction projects our vanities and aspirations, from Cyrano de Bergerac to HG Wells and Tintin — there’s a fun reproduction of Tintin on greeting Neil Armstrong on the Moon — and the space race reflects our politics. At the end you’re invited to have your say on whether we should explore and exploit the moon further. I say no. Leave it alone.