The simplest artefact can spark as much emotion as gold or grand monuments
A find of ancient fruit baskets – still with their plump doum fruits inside – attracted headlines last week. Around 2,400 years old, they were discovered off the coast of Egypt among the remains of Thonis-Heracleion, the once-busy Mediterranean entrepôt that began to sink into Aboukir Bay sometime in the second century BC.
The golden splendours of ancient “treasure” have a more obvious glamour and appeal than a few date-like fruits. One thinks of Sophia Schliemann wearing the spectacular jewellery found at Troy in the 1870s by her husband, Heinrich Schliemann – not a man who will be remembered for his punctilious archaeological technique. The great monuments of antiquity, too, have the capacity to thrill and impress: the Parthenon, or the great citadel of Machu Picchu, or the pyramids of Egypt. But at least as often, it is humble, everyday objects that capture the imagination, that make the onlooker feel they could reach out through a chink in time and touch the past.