A Tale of Two Spoons How Ancient Artefacts Still Shape Our Present.

Transcriber: Amanda Zhu
Reviewer: Rhonda Jacobs

Let me take you to ancient Greece

2,500 years ago.

Imagine a formation of soldiers
on the verge of battle,

wearing forged armor and helmets

and tightly holding on
to their spears and shields.

When they hear the command,

they sprint,

charging towards their ruthless enemies

and believing with full conviction
that they will come out victorious.

Later that day, there are commanders
and other men of status with long togas

gather together and celebrate
on reclining furniture.

They are fed grapes,

they drink wine,

and they’re entertained
by women and young boys

while discussing philosophy
and democracy into the dusk.

I doubt what I’ve just described
was difficult for anyone to conjure up,

because these are
some of the most repeated scenes

from our collective perception
of the ancient world.

You may have been reminded
of childhood characters, movies, books,

or memorable field trips to the museum

where you got to see
the armor and the vessels

that these Grecians were using.

And these images in your head

are more than just visualizations
of a remote past.

They’re also the beginning

of a cultural narrative that still defines
what it means to belong to the West.

Now, if I were to mention
the names of some other peoples

living at the same time
and within the same world

as these Grecians,

such as the Thracian peoples, the Lidyans,

the Dacians or the Scythians,

I doubt you will have ever heard of them,

let alone consider them
part of your cultural lineage.

Now, why is that?

And also, why does it matter
thousands of years later?

Well, personally,
I got into ancient history

because I was determined
to find a hack into the West.

I’m from Iran,

and I grew up in the United Arab Emirates.

And when I was younger,
I had this naive belief

that if I became an expert
in ancient Greco-Roman history,

aka the cradle of Western civilization,

I would sincerely gain an insight

into what made the West
so commanding and successful

for such a long period of time.

And in that process,
I’d about my place in the world.

Well, I did get there eventually,

just not in the way I was expecting,

because the kinds of questions
that came naturally to me in my studies

led my professor
to pull me to the side one day

and say,

“Saba, you are not interested in history.

You are interested in historiography.”

And that changed the way
I looked at everything.

So historiography is a field

that examines the act
of writing history itself.

It looks at the larger context
that a history was written in

and asks questions like,
“Who was the historian?

What was their position
in and view of their world?

And what access to historical
materials did they have?

And how did the narratives they write
affect society, and vice versa?”

And what looking through this lens reveals

is how we came to our current perception
of the ancient world.

This occurred relatively recently
through the 19th and 20th centuries,

at a time when Europe
was in an exciting period

of modernizing and nation building,

all while enjoying the height
of colonial imperialism.

What the early archaeologists
and historians had access to

was very sparse factual information
of the ancient world,

and what fueled them
was more a passion than method.

This led to the writing
of ancient narratives

that involved a lot
of filling in the blanks.

And not surprisingly,

over time, those blanks were filled in
with the ideologies of the era.

And that included
a rather binary perspective

that celebrated ideas
like democracy over despotism,

rationality over savagery,

man over nature,

and the West over the East.

And I wish I could tell you
that coming into the 21st century,

we were able to leave
these binary constructs behind,

but the truth is

that they have become deeply embedded
in how we tell the story of our origins,

from inside our museums
to our education systems

and from there to our popular culture.

There was this one
particular moment in my research

that really crystallized
this issue for me,

where I saw both the problem exposed

and also a potential way
out of that problem at the same time.

And I’d love to tell you the story

of the two ancient spoons
that brought me there.

One day back in 2011,

this beautiful 2,500-year-old spoon

went up for sale
at a Christie’s auction house

in London.

I saw it through the catalog entry

that had the label
“An Achaemenid silver kyathos.”

It’s a mouthful.

So, “kyathos” is an ancient term
for something like a ladle,

so we’ll call it a spoon.

And Achaemenid is a reference
to the First Persian Empire.

Now, there was really nothing particular
about the spoon at first

until my eyes wandered
to the auctioneer’s notes.

They refer to the existence
of another virtually identical spoon

that was owned by the Metropolitan
Museum of Art in New York.

The only difference with this spoon
was that it was labeled as being Greek.

So this perked my interest.

Here we had two
virtually identical spoons,

probably made in the same workshop
or even by the same hands,

and two very established authorities today

slotting them into opposing origins.

Did they belong to the Greek tradition,

or were they a part
of their enemies heritage,

the Persian’s?

Now, it isn’t that uncommon
for experts to disagree.

After all, the farther back we go,
the blurrier things get.

But I decided to keep
looking into it anyway,

and I’m glad I did,

because by the end of it,

I had a completely different understanding
of what I was looking at.

I discovered that back in the 80s

in New York,

the Metropolitan Museum
was battling a lawsuit

that had a group of over 300 artifacts,

including that twin spoon
at the center of it.

The lawsuit was brought against them
by the Turkish government.

Turkey was accusing the Met
of knowingly buying looted artifacts

that had been smuggled
out of their country

and then misrepresenting them
as being Greek to cover up the fact.

They had evidence to prove

that these artifacts
came from the burial mounds

of a people who lived a long time ago
in western Anatolia,

and more importantly,

who did not identify
as either Greek or Persian.

We know these people today
as the Lidyans.

Thousands of years ago,

the Lidyans were a people who lived
on land that was rich with gold deposits,

and this brought them attention.

They first enjoyed a few centuries
of their own statehood

growing into this rich and proud culture

with plenty of interaction
with the rest of the ancient world.

And then one day, they were attacked,
conquered and colonized

by the Persian Empire to their east,

and a few centuries later,

by Alexander the Great
that came charging from the West.

Now, each time that the Lydians
were taken over,

we can assume that their way of life
changed permanently,

and there was a transfer
of people, power and culture.

But with that said, the Lydians are known

throughout all this time

to have remained both ethnically -

and many also argue, through language -

distinguishable from their
neighbors to either side.

In the ancient world,

they were widely attributed
with the invention of coin minting,

so we can thank currency
in our modern world to them.

And you may have also heard

the fable of King Midas
with the golden touch

that warns of the dangers
of having too many riches.

Well, it also originated
from that region long ago.

But unfortunately for the Lydians today,
they just don’t have a place

in our collective perception
of the ancient world,

because they confuse the binary narrative.

It took Turkey six years

to settle the lawsuit
with the Metropolitan Museum

and bring that group of artifacts,
including the one spoon,

back home.

But it never affected the bigger picture,

because over 20 years later,

the spoon that I had first noticed
in the auction catalog

ended up having a really successful sale

with the same inaccurate label
of being Persian and having a Greek twin.

To me, it’s clear
that our institutions and experts

find it easier to label these spoons
as being either Persian or Greek

because putting forward
what they know they are

is both more ambiguous and complex.

And that’s never been good for business.

And as we see our
archaeological tools advance -

oh, sorry.

But the truth is

that we will never pinpoint
who made these spoons.

But it just as easily could have been,
let’s say, a Lydian artisan,

having been trained in the Persian arts,

creating work to the tastes
of Grecian aristocrats

who had been living in Lydia
for generations.

Now,

that seems like a lot more exciting
and relevant attribution to me.

But a truth that I’ve had
to accept about our present

is that the more complex
a world seems to become,

the more we seem to tightly hold on
to a black and white understanding of it,

whether that’s about today
or thousands of years ago.

And as I see us continue
to advance our archaeological tools

and even 3D digitize our artifacts
into complex collections online,

we may feel like we’re moving forward -
and in some ways we are -

but in my opinion,

we just keep moving farther away
from what history essentially is:

collective storytelling.

And I cannot stress enough
how important the start of a story is

because it sets the stage
for the rest of the events to unfold in.

If we instead revisit the ancient world
through what remains

and refill those blanks
with a new frame of mind,

not in order to narrate epic tales
of grand divisions and good over bad,

but to tell stories of syncretism,

that means the layering
of different peoples and cultures

to continuously transform us
into something new.

Well, then in a generation or two,

we might even have a chance

at slowly unraveling
some of the worst prejudices

built into our collective identity,

those that affect how we feel
around unfamiliar and foreign people.

It’s been a long time

since I stopped trying
to find my place in the world

by fitting into an established narrative.

My experience with the Lydian spoons
helped me see myself for what I am -

a culturally syncretic person
that often confuses the categories.

I’m a proud Iranian raised in the UAE

through a mixed bag of Arab,
Indian and British cultures.

Moreover, today I have
Canadian citizenship,

but I’ve made my home
here in the Netherlands

with my Italian partner.

It hasn’t been the easiest ride,

but I know that I am not
one in a million by far.

My generation, our generation,
and the next ones

are the most culturally syncretic people
to have ever existed.

So, it seems simple to me.

I ask our institutions and I ask you,

“Shouldn’t that be the perspective

from which we revisit and retell
the story of us,

starting from the very beginning?”

Thank you.

(Applause) (Cheers)