(20 Sep 2019) LEAD IN: From the Assyrians to Alexander the Great, the British Museum's "An Age of Luxury" exhibit has arrived in Madrid.
The exhibition explores a world of luxurious goods, treasured and traded by early empires, including Assyria, Babylon and Iran.
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This fish-shaped gold perfume bottle was used to keep sweet-smelling oil.
And this tiny gold fitting was for a case that held a bow and arrows. It's believed to be part of Oxus treasure, found during the Achaemenid empire, 500 BC.
From ivory, glass, gold and metals, this new exhibit has over 200 objects from the British Museum. It's called "An Age of Luxury."
By exploring the stories of luxurious objects, visitors are transported back in time, to between 900 and 300BC.
"This is a really interesting period in history, because it's a time when great empires rose in the Middle East and that political stability and also that thirst for wealth and power drove the production of beautiful, luxurious items," explains Alexandra Fletcher, assistant keeper and researcher at the British Museum's Middle East department.
Around 900BC, the Assyrian empire began to grow and take over territories, acquiring wealth and luxury goods.
Hungry for power and conquest, successive empires of Babylonia, Persia, Phoenicia followed suit.
It was an era of wars, violence and looting. Opulence and luxury defined both economic and political power.
"And then at the end of the period, you have Alexander the Great comes and that's really interesting cause that's the point where the world as it was known then changes. You get the spread of Greek culture over a huge area," says Fletcher.
It was also a time of great trade of raw materials, precious stones and manufactured objects.
There were precious materials, such as gold and silver, or beautifully carved ivory or clamshells, even ostrich eggs.
And, similar to the world today, luxury goods had their counterfeits, even during ancient times.
"Just as today, where we have fake handbags, fake shoes... in the ancient world they did this too," says Fletcher.
"So, we have a text which gives a recipe for making brilliant purple cloth that was very, very expensive in the ancient world. There was a recipe for making a cheaper fake version."
Walking through the exhibit, a stone relief, dating back to 704-681BC of Nineveh Palace's in Iraq has been lit up.
Using video mapping, this stone wall has been brought back to life.
"Taking a concrete concept such as luxury, in this exhibition we talk about empires, wars… So, we talk about power, politics, but also personal objects, cosmetics," says Isabel Salgado, exhibitions director at Caixa banking foundation.
"An Age of Luxury: the Assyrians to Alexander the Great" runs from 18 September to 26 January 2020 at CaixaForum Madrid.
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