Head of Alexander

A History of the World in 100 Objects

BBC

History

4.4 • 2.1K Ratings

🗓️ 17 May 2010

⏱️ 14 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Another chance to hear the first programmes in the second part of Neil MacGregor's global history told through objects from the British Museum. This week Neil is exploring the lives and methods of powerful rulers around the world 2000 years ago, asking what enduring qualities are needed for the perfect projection of power. Contributors include the economist Amartya Sen, the politician Boris Johnson, political commentator Andrew Marr and the writer Ahdaf Soueif. Neil begins by telling the story of Alexander the Great through a small silver coin, one that was made years after his death but that portrays an idealised image of the great leader as a vigorous young man. Neil then considers how the great Indian ruler Ashoka turned his back on violence and plunder to promote the ethical codes inspired by Buddhism. Neil tells the life story of Ashoka through a remaining fragment of one of his great pillar edicts and considers his legacy in the Indian sub-continent today. The third object in today's omnibus is one of the best known in the British Museum, the Rosetta Stone. Neil takes us to the Egypt of Ptolemy V and describes the astonishing contest that led to the most famous bits of deciphering in history - the cracking of the hieroglyphics on the Rosetta Stone. An exquisite lacquer wine cup takes Neil to Han Dynasty China in the fourth programme and the omnibus concludes with the 2000 year old head of one of the world's most notorious rulers - Caesar Augustus. Producers: Anthony Denselow and Paul Kobrak.

Transcript

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0:00.0	Thank you for downloading this episode of a history of the world in a hundred objects from BBC Radio 4.
0:25.0	Welcome back to this second part of a history of the world in a hundred objects here at the British Museum.
0:27.0	I'm starting this week just over 2,000 years ago
0:31.0	with the great empires of Europe and Asia, empires whose legacies are still
0:34.9	strongly felt in the world today, the Roman Empire in the West, the Empire of
0:39.4	Ashoka in India, and the Han Dynasty in China.
0:43.0	In this age of great rulers, I'll be looking at how power is constructed and projected.
0:50.0	Military might is just the beginning, you might say it's the easy part. How does a ruler
0:54.6	stamper's authority on the very minds of his subjects? As always, images are more effective
1:00.8	than words, and the most effective of all images are those that we see so often as we hardly notice them.
1:07.0	The ambitious ruler shapes the currency.
1:10.0	The message is in the money.
1:12.0	I'm standing in front of the very coin that shows the idealized
1:18.0	Alexander struck 40 years or more after his death by his successor Lysimachus in beautiful silver.
1:26.3	I think the nearest we've had in the modern world to the spread of Alexander's portrait
1:31.6	in the Hellenized world. I suppose it's Napoleon, where busts of Napoleon
1:36.4	were all over Europe. Then you have to come through to the dictators, I suppose Hitler
1:40.5	and Mussolini. A history of the world in a hundred objects. Silver coin showing Alexander the Great, minted in Western Turkey between 305 and 281 BC. I'm going to China soon and I've just got back from my local bank where I was
2:19.1	changing Sterling for Yuam and what struck me most as the red notes were being counted out was
2:25.3	that almost every one of them has on it the portrait of Chairman Mao. It's ironic
2:30.7	isn't it? This spectacularly successful capitalist economy carries on its currency
2:36.2	the portrait of a dead communist revolutionary. We all know why Mao reminds the Chinese people of the heroic achievements of the Communist Party, which is still in power.
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