Honoured to have opened the @britishmuseum Troy show this evening. (I’d say I felt like a minor royal - but possibly not the best comparison at the moment...) 
It’s a brilliant show - as much about what we don’t know as what we do, and our yearning to make real what we know we can never know for sure. In that sense, the exhibition is a part of its own theme.
The opening room serves as a haunting & fitting prologue: 2 pots excavated by Schliemann at Troy, & then blackened by Allied bombing raids on Berlin during WW2, in front of Cy Twombly’s Vengeance Of Achilles
“I am the cup of Nestor, good for drinking.”
The famous Pithekoussai cup, inscribed with lines that are not just among the earliest known allusions to the Trojan War, but one of the earliest extant Greek inscriptions full stop.
The famous Pithekoussai cup, inscribed with lines that are not just among the earliest known allusions to the Trojan War, but one of the earliest extant Greek inscriptions full stop.
The greatest, the most tragic scene in literature: Priam kisses the hands of Achilles, the man who slew his son.
A Roman silver cup, c. AD 50, found in a Danish chieftain’s grave
A Roman silver cup, c. AD 50, found in a Danish chieftain’s grave
A Buddhist Trojan Horse.
Mycenaean pottery from Troy VI
The Hittite tablet which mentions Aleksandu of Wilusa. Alexandros was another name for Paris, & Ilium for Troy...
