TEHRAN - London’s British Museum is currently hosting a fascinating exhibition titled “Luxury and Power: Persia to Greece”, which explores the relationship between luxury and political power in ancient Iran and southeastern Europe between 550-30 BC.

“Luxury and Power: Persia to Greece” is aimed to spotlight how the royal Persian court used luxurious objects as markers of authority and political tools so that it challenges the perception framed by ancient Greek writers, that their enemies in Persia were weak due to decadence.

The show moves beyond the ancient Greek spin to delve into a more complex story of luxury and power in ancient Iran, Athens, and the world of Alexander. Drawing on exquisite objects from Afghanistan to Italy, it explores how the royal Persian court used objects of exquisite luxury as markers of authority, defining a distinct style that was copied by different social classes throughout the empire. Early democratic Athens rejected Persian culture as decadent yet adopted luxury in intriguing ways. Alexander then swept aside the Persian empire and ushered in a new age in which Eastern and Western styles of luxury were fused.

“Luxury and Power: Persia to Greece” features gold, silver, and glass examples of Persian craft from the British Museum’s collection alongside some spectacular loans. It also showcases the Panagyurishte Treasure from Bulgaria, discovered in 1949, the nine richly decorated gold vessels demonstrate the influence of Persian and Greek luxury across the Balkans.

Alongside these stunning Persian artifacts sit Athenian examples of vessels, influenced by their Persian contemporaries. A pottery rhyton, crafted in the form of a lion’s head, demonstrates how ancient Greece emulated and incorporated styles of precious-metal luxury from the Persian court.

Moreover, it displays a gold wreath from Turkey, similar to those found in elite tombs in the kingdom of Macedonia. The gold oak wreath, consisting of two branches with a bee with two cicadas, showcases the spread of luxury across the region and how styles evolved into the period after the death of Alexander in 323 BC.

According to British Museum, this exhibition of dazzling objects from Afghanistan to Greece moves beyond the ancient Greek spin to explore a more complex story about luxury as a political tool in the West Asia and southeast Europe from 550–30 BC.

“When Greek soldiers captured the royal command tent of the Persian king during the Greco-Persian Wars, they were confronted suddenly and spectacularly by luxury on an unimaginable scale. To many ancient Greek writers, the victories of the small Greek forces against the mighty Persians were a triumph of discipline and restraint over an empire weakened by decadence and excess.”

It explores how the royal Achaemenid court of Persia used precious objects as markers of authority, defining a style of luxury that resonated across the empire from Egypt to India. It considers how Eastern luxuries were received in early democratic Athens, self-styled as Persia's arch-enemy, and how they were adapted in innovative ways to make them socially and politically acceptable, the museum wrote.

Moreover, it explores how Alexander the Great swept aside the Persian empire to usher in a new Hellenistic age in which Eastern and Western styles of luxury were fused as part of an increasingly interconnected world.

According to the Guardian, the exhibition is divided into three sections: a sort of thesis, antithesis, and synthesis. “First, we get a taste of the Persian empire, including a relief of Darius I worshipping Anubis in Egyptian style. Then we see how classical Athens wrestled with Persian artistic influence even as it mocked the defeated empire. Finally, the two cultures merge as Alexander the Great conquers Persia yet embraces its ways.”

The wars that ancient historians made so much of are relegated to small connecting displays – a Hoplite helmet, sounds of clashing weapons, that’s your lot. It’s more surprising that such short shrift is given to “the Greek historian Herodotos”. It’s oddly pedantic to insist on the Greek version of his name when he’s been famous for centuries as Herodotus. And strange to marginalise the father of history: Herodotus didn’t just tell of Persia’s invasion of Greece and its failure, but also explored the cultures of much of the Greeks’ known world, perhaps even visiting Babylon to research and listen.

Herodotus brings history to life, which this show refuses to do. Rejecting all that Herodotean stuff, it instead centers on a history of cups. At the heart of each section are huge, luxurious drinking cups known as rhytons. Shaped like horns, and made of gold or silver, these Persian banqueting vessels feature bulls, griffins, and human portraits.

In classical Athens, full of cocky democratic self-consciousness after seeing off the mighty Achaemenid army, it was considered vulgar and ostentatious to drink from a bulbous golden horn. So rhytons were made out of clay. A display of drinking cups from 5th century Athens shows how ceramicists and painters turned the opulent Persian rhyton into pottery in the shape of ram and pig heads, painted red, white, and black, the Guardian wrote.

“Surely this all confirms the traditional view that Greek and Persian culture were opposites. Athens in the 5th century BC was so rich it could afford a gigantic ivory statue of Athena, covered in gold, to stand inside the new Parthenon temple, rebuilt after the Persians had sacked the Acropolis. Yet the classical style that crystallized at this time was simple and austere, rejecting Persian magnificence. A section of the Parthenon frieze in the exhibition depicts young Athenian women carrying Persian objects as tribute in the Panathenaic procession: but artistically this masterpiece owes nothing to Persia.”

This Hellenistic era comes across as a fascinating, seductive cultural melting pot. At the heart of the Hellenistic delights are gold drinking cups and platters from the Panagyurishte Treasure, exquisite Thracian objects lent by Bulgaria’s National Museum of History. They brilliantly combine Greek and Persian themes in an aesthetic free-for-all. A drinking horn has a classical frieze, and naked gods and demigods sport on cups with bull faces, all in glinting gold. A cup in the shape of a Greek amphora has two centaurs dancing on it as handles.

“Luxury and Power: Persia to Greece” will be running through August 13 at the British Museum.

AFM