Object 10: Jomon Pot (Made around 5,000 BC. Clay, found in Japan)

Coils of fibre

Twisted strips of bark and reed

Woven into bags and baskets

To gather nuts and seed

The Jomon people

Hunt animals and fish

But meals can be a struggle

Without a bowl or dish

Soggy baskets

Animal skins that leak and spill

Charred meat burning

From the Jomon’s latest kill

Bitter acorns and shellfish that should be boiled

Someone is sick and has a fever

Another meal is spoiled

Food is stored in baskets

Buried underground

Where mice and rats and vermin

Are likely to be found

Food is in the hedgerows

In the forest and in the sea

But how to cook it, keep it fresh

No one yet can see

Cup your hands

And scoop up water from the lake

Thirsty instinct

Tells our hands the shape we have to make

Cup your hands and scoop up clay

From the earth beneath your feet

Curious fingers press and probe

And make the thing complete

It hardens by the fire

Its shape is clear to see

A hollow like your hands would make

To lift up water from a lake:

A cup, a bowl, a pot that anyone can make...

Coils of clay

Rolled and folded

Layer upon layer

Melded and moulded

The thing is growing

Ring by ring

A pot for the Jomon

A practical thing

Its sides are straight

Its base is flat

But the pot is pressed with cord and plait -

A basket in clay

An added touch, a decorative flair

An artistic idea plucked from the air?

Motifs of animal bones

Shells and trees

Natural things that seem to please

Are printed in relief 

In browns and greys

So that everyday items

May brighten their days

But the pots were not only stylishly good looking

They were made for storing food and cooking

Leak-proof and heat-proof

Here was something new

Now meat could be boiled and pot-roasted -

The world’s very first stew!

The hunter-gatherer people

In a Japanese village by the sea

Now found life far more stable

As a varied diet and safer food

Was shared at the family table

And human history is written in clay:

Ming bowls from China

Pot-bellied African jars

Greek vases with heroes fighting

Islamic urns spangled with stars

Wedgewood tureens in cream and pale blue

Delicate Japanese porcelain in every colour and hue...

Its sides are straight

Its base is flat

The pot is pressed with cord and plait -

But now it has an added touch

Something new, something bold

The grey, brown pot is lined with gold -

Transformed for a ritual worthy of its age

Respect is paid to this ceramic sage

A ritual object, an essential key

A mizusashi water jar for the ceremony of tea

And Jesus at that long, long table

Passed a bowl around to his disciples there,

And way back down the long, long ages

Cups and bowls and jars declare

How something so very ordinary

Is a precious thing we share

As we eat and drink together

Like the Jomon people

Seven thousand years ago

Who left their pots behind to let us know

How by such simple things

Civilizations grow.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b00q2p6g

OBJECT 9: Maya Maize God Statue. (Limestone statue of a Mayan maize god found in Copán, Honduras, made in 715 CE)

Look upon me and see your creation:

A God carved in stone, communing with the Heavens;

You have closed my eyes in supplication;

Parted my lips in frozen meditation;

Your prayers are still in my mouth,

Waiting to be spoken.

Gaze upon me;

See how my arms reach out to your world,

Look how the palms of my hands signal a benediction:

Serene stone, God of the corn, crowned with a headdress of corn;

Strands of silky hair spilling out of the leaves you have placed around my face;

A statue, small and divine; imbibed with the power you have given me.

I am the benevolent Mayan maize God;

Born of the earth like you and your kind,

I too am bound by the laws of the earth:

The sowing of the seed, the reaping of the crop and the ploughing of the soil,

So that I may live again and by doing so, give you life:

The womb, the grave and hope of rebirth,

A cycle of belief as frail as flesh and as enduring as the corn, yellow as the sun.

See how I sit so very calm,

Contemplating the mystery of life in this land of ours;

Remembering how the first mother-father was modelled by the early Gods from maize itself, causing the sun, moon and stars to appear to bless their mortal creation.

Watch how I guard your crops from high;

Set on the steps of a monumental pyramid with other stone guardians;

Made by you who are made by us;

Sentinels of stone communing with nature on your behalf,

So that each new season will give up its bounty once again

And no one will have to bear the pangs of hunger and starvation.

You have given me this task,

But the world is a different place now;

Corn is a commodity, a fuel for industry;

People have even probed its ancient secrets to alter its genetic inheritance,

And the forests where your Gods once thrived are diminished by the growth of commerce and market forces.

The corn still grows as yellow of the sun, but somehow marred and different.

It seems that not even a Maize God can halt progress...

Yet still my eyes are closed in supplication;

My lips are parted in frozen meditation;

And your prayers are still in my mouth,

Waiting to be spoken.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/articles/2Wt2ttbbXsDv31ZNr4ThyC2/episode-transcript-episode-9-maya-maize-god-statue

Illustration by the artist Ryan Leigh

https://ryanleighart.com/?fbclid=PAAaYEeYRyIaGrOFuaF1iXwu8dBlqdJelIi1aOaKTu6cMKJLfV_FnEOqIpIqg

OBJECT 8: Model of four cattle (made around 5,500 years ago). Painted clay, found at El Amra, southern Egypt

When the green savannah grass of the Sahara began to dry and wither,

And the giraffe, gazelle and elephant had disappeared forever,

When water was scarce and soil became sand,

And dry arid desert consumed the land,

When the crops in the fields failed without rain,

And hungry hunters wandered the plain,

Searching for food, for something to kill,

They saw herds of cattle were living there still...

Milk and blood, milk and blood

Domesticated cows chewing the cud,

There is meat at hand when times are tough,

When famine strikes and there's not enough.

Horn and skin, horn and skin,

Hides to wear and food within,

Beneath the glare of a remorseless sun,

A vein is cut; the living liquid begins to run,

The cow stands silent, bleeding its sacrifice into the waiting bowl,

As its human master drinks his daily toll.

Milk and blood, horn and skin,

The taming of the world and all within,

The overlord of nature stakes his claim,

The world and its creatures are all fair game.

A grave in the desert - A23,

Body, male, and what else can we see -

Contents: baton of clay in red stripes with imitation mace-head, small red pottery box,

Leg bones of a small animal, pots...

And a stand of four clay cows.

An archaeological find in the Egyptian desert sand,

Four horned clay cows grazing fertile land,

Tiny statuettes moulded from the mud of the Nile,

Four tiny cows standing in file,

Waiting patiently for resurrection when they will bleed and slave,

A symbol of life in the pit of a grave,

Beasts of burden to ease a poor farmer's strife

In the eternal realm of the afterlife.

And where would we be without the cow?

The world would not be what it is now:

Cows in the meadow,

Milk cows in the parlour,

Wild West cowboys creating a drama,

Steak and burgers, burgers and steak,

Beef on the table, potatoes to bake,

Cheese for the board, butter for bread,

And four clay cows wait to be led,

To the celestial pastures by the Nile in the sky;

A Milky Way river that flows on by,

Where the cow will be crowned, Hathor, the eye of Ra,

Worshipped as fertile goddess, wide and far.

Milk and blood, hide and meat,

The model cows still stand so neat,

Painted pottery cattle on a field of clay,

Undisturbed until this day,

Waiting for their master’s voice, with jubilation

To summon them to a destiny of subjugation.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b00q2p6b

Object 2: Olduvai stone chopping tool (made 1.8 million years ago) found in Olduvai Gorge, Tanzania, East Africa

Dead meat
Rank
On the vast Savannah.
Leopard's leftovers,
Spilt gore:
Food for a forager,
Food for the brain,
White ribs of marrow wilting in the bright African sun
Two million years ago.

Stone on the ground,
Stone in the hand,
Stone in the brain of Savannah man;
Curious eyes examining a fist of stone,
Turning it around,
Feeling its weight,
Seeing the possibilities within...

And then the slap of stone on stone:
Two hands, two stones, two eyes
Click an echo of labour at the cliffs of the great Olduvai Gorge...
Two million years ago.

And death is always in the air,
Death is always an instant away:
Hunger gnawing at bones,
The snarl in the long grass, the deep throaty grunt in the dead of night,
Claws flexing in anticipation of a kill.

But the stone is growing an edge as his eyes narrow -
Four strikes, five, turn it around - another chip sharpens a line,
It will do the job, but a spark of thought chips another possibility -
Seven, eight strikes and there in his hand is a tool.

While the leopard and lion sleep in the heat of the day,
Savannah man is kneeling over the torn carcase of their abandoned meal.
Stone cuts flesh from bones; stone severs sinews and butchers meat,
Stone shatters a bloody femur and reveals the nourishing marrow within -
Greedy mouths suck at the sticky substance of life:
Lick the liquid brain food that their tool has revealed,
Devours the rich protein that feeds the mind,
That gives them the imagination to see beyond instinct,
That grows the thought in the rich loam of the cerebellum,
To make tools to give them the edge
In the deep scar of earth one thousand miles long,
Baking in the blaze of an African sun
Two million years ago.

And we are all Africans,
Bonded in the struggle to live,
Bred in the fierce ritual of survival,
Savannah people with the marrow of invention rich in our bones:
Our ancestral DNA, a bequest from someone with a stone in his hand,
Beginning a journey that would lead us... where?

http://www.bbc.co.uk/ahistoryoftheworld/objects/ykHw5-oqQEGFnvat1gavxA

Object 1: Mummy of Hornedjitef (third century BC). A wooden coffin from Thebes, Egypt

I want to tell you a story about a museum,

And of  how ghosts speak to the living,

And how, like a dying star they sometimes leave a message behind:

"We were here, we were here," they say -

"Look at the objects we crafted, the tools we used,

Our art, our culture, our language

Speaking to you through the things that made us human."

And the remnants of lives once lived are here in the museum,

A message from the past, from our ancestors... our family;

They are here so that we don't forget where we came from,

They are here to remind us that we are all walking the same uncertain path

Through history,

Together.

And in this museum there is a corpse of a priest,

The shell of a man, who once lived and walked upon the earth,

But now lies wrapped tightly in bandages,

Embalmed and blessed by the priests who were to follow him later:

His name was Hornedjitef,

For it is written on his sarcophagus, so that the gods would know him,

And welcome his soul to the eternal afterlife in the kingdom of the dead.

But the journey there was complex and full of danger,

So before he died Hornedjitef said:

"I. Hornedjitef am an important priest,

Therefore I will commission spells and amulets to make my journey sure,

And a star map to navigate the temple of the sky,

So that I can weave a path through the delicate weft of constellations;

Because Heaven is a long, long way from here and a soul might get lost on the way,

Even one as important as mine."

And so upon his spaceship sarcophagus, in meticulous detail,

His brother priests marked down the blueprint of the universe,

The firmament and all its mysteries, spelt out confidently in hieroglyphs,

To guide him safely to Ra and Nut, the great sky goddess,

Who were waiting, patiently

To welcome their worthy priest to his rightful place within their pantheon.

But in spite of his map and his amulets and spells,

And inscriptions from the holy book of the dead to guide him on his way,

Hornedjitef's mortal remains are now interred in Bloomsbury:

His golden mask gazes out of a glass case at the curious visitors,

Telling the story of how a man who planned to fly through space,

Somehow ended his journey in a museum.

And through the celestial void of time, a dying star pulses its signal to us:

A haunting magnetic voice -

The voice of a star that is no longer there:

A ghost in space saying, "I was here, I was here!"

But like a priest from ancient Egypt,

The star as big and impressive as it was, has long since passed away,

No map or chart will take us there, or reveal its presence in all its glittering glory -

The heavenly pantheon it seems is a mortal as a man:

As mortal as a man who was once a mighty priest,

Who tried to steer his way through a universe of stars,

So that he could live forever.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/ahistoryoftheworld/objects/sogITE3FSKStlk12qd2W3w