Neil MacGregor: 2600 years of history in one object

http://www.ted.com A clay cylinder covered in Akkadian cuneiform script, damaged and broken, the Cyrus Cylinder is a powerful symbol of religious tolerance and multi-culturalism. In this enthrallin...

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The things we makehave one supreme quality --they live longer than us.We perish, they survive;we have one life, they have many lives,and in each life they can mean different things.Which means that, while we all have one biography,they have many.I want this morning to talkabout the story, the biography -- or rather the biographies --of one particular object,one remarkable thing.It doesn't, I agree,look very much.It's about the size of a rugby ball.It's made of clay,and it's been fashionedinto a cylinder shape,covered with close writingand then baked dry in the sun.And as you can see,it's been knocked about a bit,which is not surprisingbecause it was made two and a half thousand years agoand was dug upin 1879.But today,this...