Arabian bronze hand

A History of the World in 100 Objects

BBC

History

4.4 • 2.1K Ratings

🗓️ 4 June 2010

⏱️ 14 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Throughout this week Neil MacGregor is looking at how the great faiths were creating new visual aids to promote devotion around the world of 1700 years ago. Having looked at emerging images from Hinduism, Zoroastrianism, Christianity and Buddhism he turns his attention to the religious climate of pre-Islamic Arabia. The story is told through a life sized bronze hand cut at the wrist and with writing on the back. It turns out to be not a part of a god but a gift to a god in a Yemeni hill village. Neil uses this mysterious object to explore the centrality of Arabia at this period, with its wealth of local gods and imported beliefs. The hand surgeon Jeremy Field considers whether this was the modelled from a real human hand while the religious historian Philip Jenkins reflects on what happens to the old pagan gods when a brand new religion sweeps into town. Proudcer: Anthony Denselow

Transcript

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0:00.0	Thank you for downloading this episode of a history of the world in a hundred objects
0:07.8	from BBC Radio 4. All this week I've been looking at the ways in which around 1700 years ago
0:16.7	the great religions of the age created images that would bring the faithful closer to
0:21.9	their gods and how those religions became embedded in the great
0:25.2	empires of the time. We've had images of the Buddha, Hindu gods and Christ. Today's object is part of a human body, but it doesn't belong to a God. It's a gift to a God.
0:37.0	It's a right hand for something to be sitting at someone's right hand or to be someone's right hand man
0:57.6	Well, we can imagine the man whose hand this represented
1:01.4	wishing very much to be at the right hand of his particular God.
1:07.2	He even bears the God's name, Talab.
1:12.4	Looking at a hand like this it's an object that you could see in so many cultures
1:17.5	through the Middle East over the last 2,000 years. The labels change,
1:22.5	judism, Islam, Christianity, paganism, but the objects endure.
1:27.5	I suppose being a hand surgeon I don't actually regard as
1:31.8	being quite so disquieting as someone who isn't used to this sort of thing, but a cut-off hand has eerie sort of features about it and one has a slight concern that it might move.
1:44.0	A history of the world in a hundred objects. Arabian Bronze Hand, Second to third century from Yemen. The first four programs this week have been about religions that have millions or hundreds of millions of followers.
2:21.0	But, 1700 years ago, there were far more religions in the world than today, and many, many more gods.
2:27.0	Gods at this date tended to have strictly local responsibilities, not the worldwide embrace that we're used to now.
2:34.8	In Mecca, for example, before Mohammed, pilgrims worshipped in a temple which had a statue of a different
2:40.0	God for every day of the year.
2:42.4	Today's program is about one of those numberless
2:45.0	Arabian gods that didn't survive the coming of Muhammad. His full name was
2:50.2	Talab Ryam, meaning the strong one of Riam, a Yemeni hill town, and he protected the local
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