Emperor Hadrian Conquers The British Museum In Blockbuster Display
The Age
Saturday August 16, 2008
TWO years ago, Thorston Opper, one of the British Museum's most creative and passionate curators, unearthed from its immeasurable collections an ancient Roman memorandum that showed a unit of Iraqis once occupied Britain. Dr Opper, a specialist in the Department of Greece and Rome, clearly savoured history's wonderful tendency to repeat itself and evocatively described the snippet: "Call it an exchange of peacekeepers," he said.
Fast forward 24 months and Dr Opper's prescient ability to link the past with the present has created a blockbuster for the British Museum, which, under the leadership of its superstar director, Neil MacGregor, has this month become Britain's most visited cultural institution. Last year alone, "the British" as it is affectionately known, ushered a record 6 million visitors through its doors - up a million on the previous year. And the new exhibition, Hadrian, Empire and Conflict, appears to be on the road to breaking yet another record. This week, as London's skies opened and "summer" temperatures dropped below 16 degrees, the museum was forced to employ its own army of extra staff and provide timed entries to the thousands who flocked to its magnificent halls. The ancient document, known as "Notitia Dignitatum", was effectively a list of all the military and civil posts of the Roman empire around 400 BC - well after the building of the wall from AD122. But the reference to the small, irregular maritime unit of Iraqis then based at Arbeia - a wall fort closest to what is now the north-eastern English town of South Shields - suggests they were probably already there at the time when the Roman empire under Hadrian stretched all the way to the gulf. The men described as "bargemen from the Tigris" in the list were probably a unit from southern Iraq who formed part of the Roman troops deployed to defend the empire from incursions against its northernmost borders around Hadrian's Wall. But these are not the only evocative historical resonances that exist between the modern world and the ancient - and which are so splendidly displayed in this exhibition. Hadrian became emperor in AD117 and he inherited from his predecessor Trajan an empire pushed to its limits - it was stressed, over-extended and plagued by violent incursions and guerilla warfare on its remote fringes. Judea was on the brink of exploding, Macedonia was rebelling and the province of Britannia was close to another uprising. So, Iraq, Israel, the Balkans and Britain were all causing him trouble. Hadrian's strategy in response? He withdrew his troops from the hot spot known then as Mesopotamia and now as Iraq. This was a conflict he simply didn't need - and it was a successful policy. The exhibition, which runs until October 26, is inside the domed hall that is the museum's reading room. It contains some extraordinary new finds, including the monumental stone head of the emperor, which was dug out of the soil in Sagalassos, Turkey, only last year. The head - noble and breathtakingly handsome - has never been seen in public before, not even in Turkey, and its exhibition is the result of what has been described as "complex negotiations". Dr Opper has been quoted saying: "You can probably still smell the soil on it."
© 2008 The Age
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