British museum, sarcophagi ,urns, rites and alchemy

Having spoken to Alice Lyons again about the other thread within my thinking about returning the work to where it came from and the thoughts about burial urns, it was suggested I should visit the british museum to look at different forms of burial sarcophagi and urns.

I had not been to the museum for many years and was impressed by the new space and the siting of the 'house frontal pole' from British Columbia obviously because my mind has become attuned to the column/totemic image.

Obviously, I was intrigued by the simple shapes I saw, the more animalistic or figurative imagery/shapes didn't really seem relevant, however the monumental forms I saw had an impact and the incised marks and the cataloguing of the work really intrigued me too.

I was also interested how the curator had linked ritual and the mystic to the sense of religion bound up in funeral rites....but also to the thinking of the alchemists, who are consistently linked to the work of the potter.