This ambitious exhibition (to 12 September) seeks to get beyond the modern nation state of Iran and recall it as a civilisation, one with a complex and multicultural history extending far beyond its present-day borders and touching civilisations from Mughal India to the Roman Empire.

Epic Iran
Victoria & Albert Museum, London

This ambitious exhibition (to 12 September) seeks to get beyond the modern nation state of Iran and recall it as a civilisation, one with a complex and multicultural history extending far beyond its present-day borders and touching civilisations from Mughal India to the Roman Empire.

Unsurprisingly for a museum committed to design, the presentation of the artefacts is dizzyingly beautiful, with something of a hypnotic quality. The sheer quality and number of objects is especially impressive, starting with fresh and elegant pottery from 5,000 years ago. The early part of the show is like peering into some impossibly rich chamber dug deep into the earth; golden drinking horns mass shadows behind them, perfectly and eerily illuminated like something in a dream, while clay tablets and walls of carvings are all around, and everywhere the strange pageantry of forgotten kings and empires resurrecting some impossible spirit: a glimpse into a way of life outside of modern imagin­ation or psychology.

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