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Because of the strong parallels with the Susanna story, it’s always been tempting to see the crystal as connected to this royal drama. Perhaps it was made as a present for Theutberga to show Lothair’s sincerity in accepting that she was blameless – if so, it’s a kind of private statement marking a temporary truce in their marital hostilities. But aspects of the way in which the final scene is treated hint that it is almost certainly something much more significant. In the last scene, the artist deviates from the biblical text and shows Susanna being declared innocent by a king sitting in judgement, and the inscription specifically names Lothair. The message is clear: one of the key duties of the king is to ensure that justice is done – in short, the king must secure and respect the rule of law, even at great personal cost to himself. Justice is almost the defining royal virtue.

A treatise, probably written for Lothair himself, spells this out:

The just and peaceful king carefully thinks about each case, and not despising the sick and poor of his people, speaks just judgements, putting down the wicked and raising the good.

These ideals, articulated more than a thousand years ago, are still central to European political life today. Lord Bingham told me:

In the centre of the crystal, one sees the king who commissioned it in the role of judge. This is of considerable interest and importance because historically the crown and monarchy has always been regarded as the fount of justice. When Queen Elizabeth II took her Coronation Oath in 1953 she swore a very old oath, prescribed by an Act of 1688, that she would do justice and mercy in all her judgements. This is exactly the role in which one sees King Lothair – in the role of actually personally administering justice, which, of course, the Queen no longer does, but the judges who do it in her name are very proud to be called Her Majesty’s judges.

The Susanna Crystal was made for a king without an heir in a kingdom without a future. In 869, when Lothair died undivorced, his uncles did indeed partition his lands, and all that remains of Lotharingia today is the name of Lorraine. For more than a thousand years, indeed until 1945, Lothair’s Middle Kingdom was bitterly fought over by the successors of the wicked uncles, France and Germany. If Lothair had succeeded in divorcing his wife, and had had a legitimate heir, Lorraine might now rank with Spain, France and Germany as one of the great states of continental Europe. Lotharingia perished, but the principle that Lothair’s Crystal proclaims has survived: a central duty of the ruler of the state is to guarantee that justice is done, dispassionately and in open court. Innocence must be protected. The Lothair Crystal is one of the first European images of the notion of the rule of law.

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Statue of Tara

Bronze statue, from Sri Lanka

AD 700–900

Almost every religion has spirits or saints, gods or goddesses, that can be called upon to see us through troubled times. If you were a Sri Lankan around AD 800 you would probably have invoked the name of Tara, the spirit of generous compassion. Over the centuries many artists have given Tara physical form, but it is hard to imagine many more beautiful than the golden, nearly life-size figure which now presides serenely over the long Asia gallery at the British Museum.

The statue of Tara is cast in a single piece of solid bronze, which has then been covered in gold. When new, and seen under the Sri Lankan sun, she must have been dazzling. Even now, when her gilding is rather worn and illuminated only by the cool light of Bloomsbury, she still has a compelling lustre. She is about three quarters life-size, and she stands, as she always would have, on a plinth, so that as you look up at her she benignly gazes down at you. Her face tells you at once that she comes from southern Asia. But that’s not the first thing that strikes visitors as they look at her: she has a quite impossible