The Bagram Ivories
Spectacular 1stC CE Sanchi-style carvings on ivory, originally probably part of a throne, found in the storeroom of a Kushan palace under the current Bagram airbase.
Scholars believe they were probably carved nearby by itinerant Indian craftsmen working for the Kushans.
Sanchi has an inscription referring to a donation by the ivory carvers of nearby Vidisha. This is quite possibly their work.
The carvings of the Bagram ivories shows scenes representing the women's quarters of a palace, and this may well be where the seat was intended to be placed.
Roman/Hellenistic glassware, possibly from Egypt, or maybe made on site from Egyptian glass rods, found alongside the Bagram Ivories.
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My beautiful Anglo-Bengali great great grandmother, Sophia Pattle. She had quite a life: born in Chandernagar, educated in Versailles and married in Calcutta, she brought up her children in Little Holland House in Kensington, then a village outside London.
In Little Holland House she lived with her sister, Sarah, Sarah's husband Henry Prinsep, a Sanskritist who opposed Macaulay's Anglicising reforms & wrote the first English-language history of the Sikhs.
Also living in Little Holland House was the painter GM Watts, then known as 'England's Michelangelo' who came to lunch and stayed for 35 years.
The loot which Clive lifted from Murshidabad after winning the Battle of Plassey in 1757 made him the richest self-made man in Europe. In 2004, a Qatari royal bought a jade flask from his descendants for £3m. Its now in Islamic Museum in Doha.
The same Qatari prince also bought a flyswatter for £800,000, and most of Clive’s hookah, which is currently on display at the V&A. The rest of the hookah remains with Clive's other loot in a cabinet at Powis Castle.
The rest of Clive's loot, including Tipu Sultan's Campaign Tent and Siraj ud Daula's abandoned palanquin, remains with Clive's descendants in Powis. Tragically, there is no comparable collection of late Mughal treasures left anywhere in India, Pakistan, Afghanistan or Bangladesh.
Strange synchronicities: I spent the day reading about Roman trade w India- which was far more substantial than its minimal trade with China along the Silk Road. The best evidence for this are the figures given by Pliny, whose villa was at Bellagio, right across the lake from me
The demand for silk & spices by the Roman aristocracy moved Pliny to remark that “India is brought near by lust for gain.. India is the sink of the world’s precious metal.. There is no year in which does not drain our empire of at least fifty five million silver sesterces… "
"So manifold is the labour employed & so distant is the region is the region of the globe drawn upon," Pliny continued, "to enable the Roman matron to flaunt transparent raiment in public." During the 1stC CE, at least 120 Roman ships sailed every year from the Red Sea to India.
A fine obituary of Roberto Calasso in New York Times
Renaissance Man of Letters, Dies at 80. A Florentine by birth, he was a polymath as an author and publisher (Kafka, Vedic philosophy, Greek mythology) who reached a wide international readership.
I first met Calasso in Milan through Bruce Chatwin, who he had championed in Italy, and turned into a bestseller; and in due course he did the same for me. If he liked a book, he could be the most powerful ally and would put his full authority and reputation behind it.
Suddenly you found your book being reviewed and taken incredibly seriously across Italy, and sent straight into top of the bestseller list.