Jonathan Jones: The Evil Empire: Persia's Kings Are History's Great Villains
The title of this exhibition is a bit misleading. Forgotten Empire, the British Museum calls its spectacular resurrection of ancient Persia. Yet the Persians are as notorious in their way as Darth Vader, the Sheriff of Nottingham, General Custer, or any other embodiment of evil empire you care to mention. They are history's original villains.
In its day, which lasted from the middle of the 500s BC until the defeat of Darius III by Alexander the Great in 331 BC, the Persian empire ruled a vast portion of the then-known world from the Nile to the Indus. It connected the Mediterranean with modern Afghanistan. Rich beyond dreams, powerful beyond dispute, the great kings ruled from their mighty palaces at Susa and Persepolis, tolerating the religions and cultures of subject peoples and harvesting the creativity of near eastern civilisation that had already, before they came along, invented writing and urban life. ...
The most vivid portrait of a Persian ruler isn't even in this exhibition. It appears in a mosaic found in Pompeii, now in the Naples Archaeological Museum, based on a lost painting of Alexander the Great in battle. Through a tangle of horses, men and spears, Alexander charges. Darius stands helpless in his chariot, his face startled and appalled, like a frightened rabbit. So much for Persia!
This is how history is made - by writers and artists recycling stories and images down the centuries. This mosaic decorated the House of the Faun in Pompeii centuries after the fall of Darius; millennia after that, the victories of Alexander are still box office.
It takes Neil MacGregor's idealistic British Museum to put the Persian point of view. Everything about Forgotten Empire is calculated to turn history on its head. This is archaeology meeting world politics. The very existence of the exhibition is a diplomatic coup: in case you hadn't noticed, Persia is now Iran. The loans from Tehran that have made Forgotten Empire possible were negotiated before the recent change of government and had to be renegotiated at the last minute.
This is the kind of exhibition I expect of the British Museum. Here at last is the enlightening encounter with another culture that, in the Bloomsbury museum's years of decline, was replaced by crap like an Agatha Christie show. At the same time, it's laudably different from a Royal Academy blockbuster: less swank, more thought. I can promise you will not only be delighted by gold daggers and chariots but leave with a sense of Persian history. It's first rate.
So why was I disappointed? I was left flat - not by the superb show but by the Persian empire itself. The British Museum wants us to believe Persia was traduced by the Greeks. It wants to show us an alternative Persia from the evil empire vilified by Hellenic historians. Yet everything confirms this Greek "myth" of a supremely rich, powerful, bureau-cratically faceless empire. The real difference between the Greek version and the version we get here is that the Greeks made the Persians glamorous in their villainy.
In its day, which lasted from the middle of the 500s BC until the defeat of Darius III by Alexander the Great in 331 BC, the Persian empire ruled a vast portion of the then-known world from the Nile to the Indus. It connected the Mediterranean with modern Afghanistan. Rich beyond dreams, powerful beyond dispute, the great kings ruled from their mighty palaces at Susa and Persepolis, tolerating the religions and cultures of subject peoples and harvesting the creativity of near eastern civilisation that had already, before they came along, invented writing and urban life. ...
The most vivid portrait of a Persian ruler isn't even in this exhibition. It appears in a mosaic found in Pompeii, now in the Naples Archaeological Museum, based on a lost painting of Alexander the Great in battle. Through a tangle of horses, men and spears, Alexander charges. Darius stands helpless in his chariot, his face startled and appalled, like a frightened rabbit. So much for Persia!
This is how history is made - by writers and artists recycling stories and images down the centuries. This mosaic decorated the House of the Faun in Pompeii centuries after the fall of Darius; millennia after that, the victories of Alexander are still box office.
It takes Neil MacGregor's idealistic British Museum to put the Persian point of view. Everything about Forgotten Empire is calculated to turn history on its head. This is archaeology meeting world politics. The very existence of the exhibition is a diplomatic coup: in case you hadn't noticed, Persia is now Iran. The loans from Tehran that have made Forgotten Empire possible were negotiated before the recent change of government and had to be renegotiated at the last minute.
This is the kind of exhibition I expect of the British Museum. Here at last is the enlightening encounter with another culture that, in the Bloomsbury museum's years of decline, was replaced by crap like an Agatha Christie show. At the same time, it's laudably different from a Royal Academy blockbuster: less swank, more thought. I can promise you will not only be delighted by gold daggers and chariots but leave with a sense of Persian history. It's first rate.
So why was I disappointed? I was left flat - not by the superb show but by the Persian empire itself. The British Museum wants us to believe Persia was traduced by the Greeks. It wants to show us an alternative Persia from the evil empire vilified by Hellenic historians. Yet everything confirms this Greek "myth" of a supremely rich, powerful, bureau-cratically faceless empire. The real difference between the Greek version and the version we get here is that the Greeks made the Persians glamorous in their villainy.