Alexander the Great

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Haunting artifacts imbued with a strange spirit stare back at us from a distant time when the earth was still young and uncluttered. The collection (on loan from the Hermitage Museum in St Petersburg) encompasses a limited number of items, but the best of their kind.

The mythological scenes depicted on amphorae capture quintessential passages from Greek classical literature (Achilles tying the corpse of Hector to his chariot for example). Some of the items on show predate the age of Alexander by a couple of centuries and come from places as far away as the Caspian Sea (Russia) – all bear witness to incredible levels of sophistication that one finds hard to reconcile with such remote pasts, the jewellery for example. Most of the items, pottery, jewellery, coinage, architectural samples such as cornices of once inhabited houses, fall squarely within the age of Alexander and hark back to exotically named places such as Corinth, Ephesus, Antioch, Smyrna, Tyre, Persepolis and dozens other place names from Greek colonised Asia Minor.

The collection stretches in geographical space from the Balkans to India and everywhere and in everything, from not so tiny but flawlessly executed cameos of later rulers, to statues of the Buddha, one sees clearly the explosive impact of Helene culture on local forms and practices.

A selection of armoury from helmets to shin guards reveals human statures whose dimensions cannot have been very different from our own; a fairly substantial fragment of horse harness belonging to the battle charger of an officer from the army of Darius shows, embossed in the leather, five golden lions walking in Indian file, a surfeit of art wherever the human eye falls, evoking the almost unbelievable wealth and style of such time and places, while a fragment of tapestry with colours long faded, displays complex and intricate patterns.

Along the walls of the exhibition space, organised in a spiral layout of rooms and alcoves, perhaps to reflect the complexity of its central theme – the life of Alexander – citations taken from diverse historians converge and clash in their accounts of the main events, while other art objects from much closer centuries – from 17th Century French paintings celebrating the reign of Louis XIV (the 'Sun King'), to ornate Italian Renaissance armours - are inserted in the display to reveal and ponder the transcendent impact of Alexander's legend on history and time.

Yet, from the biographical detail of such meteoric rise to wealth, power and position, and of the paranoias, suspicions, rivalries, jealousies, conflicts and falling-outs which inevitably accompany such ambitions, one comes away feeling that Alexander's conquest of 'the world' may have been no more than a hugely successful business enterprise… though looking at the funerary effigies in terracotta of humbler original tomb owners, one is left wondering at the 'immortal coil in the frail and mortal frame' that would drive even ordinary folks to such statements of megalomania.

More likely, the impact of Alexander on world history may have been the realisation that with tools and technique, any man could conquer the innocent world.

Well, perhaps not any man! The legend endures, as large numbers of visitors attest, passing through the exhibition space, on even this ordinary Monday afternoon.

A must while it lasts!