Thank you for downloading this episode of a history of the world in a hundred objects

from BBC Radio 4. I'm walking with the gods. I'm in the gallery that's got objects from the

time when Britain was part of the Roman Empire around 1700 years ago. Here's Mars, there's Bacchus with his

wine cup, pan piping on a silver dish, and now I've arrived at what looks like another pagan god, this time in mosaic.

It's a shoulder length portrait.

He is roughly life size, clean-shaven, his fair hair swept back, and he's wearing a tunic and a robe tightly wrapped around

his shoulders.

But which God is this?

There's a clue, because this is a man with a monogram.

Behind his head are the two Greek letters,

Kai and Row. And that tells me at once who he is, because they're the first two

letters of the word Christos. And this is in fact Christ. It's one of the word Christos and this is in fact Christ. It's one of the earliest images we have

of him anywhere and it's an astonishing survival made not for a church in Eastern Mediterranean

or in Imperial Rome, but for the floor of a villa

in Dorset, somewhere around the year 350. I think this is an experiment. It's an experiment in how to depict Christ in familiar iconographic form.

I find it a rather distant object.

The image of Christ is not, I think, an attractive one, has that desperate damn

chin.

I like the way that the eyes of the face are so not quite staring but they are very piercing.

I can't imagine anybody nominating it as their favorite image of Christ.

A history of the world in a hundred objects. The Hinton St Mary Mosaic, 4th century from a Roman villa in Dorset, England.

This week we're looking at how about 1700 years ago a number of great religions

...