• Choose a category
• All
• Classic-Fiction

By Root 2791 0

of Acre in the middle of the thirteenth century, with the customs duties that were due on each commodity. It doesn’t actually mention these glass beakers, but it mentions Muslim pottery as one of the main items that would have been taxed. So the appearance or survival of beakers of this sort in Europe has to be seen in the context of the enormous trade between the West and the Levant, and further east to furthest Asia, that was passing through a Crusader port.

All this opens up an intriguing possibility. We know that Hedwig’s brother-in-law, the king of Hungary, spent some time in the city of Acre. Could he have commissioned the beakers while he was there? It would explain why they were later connected to Hedwig, the family saint, and how they came to central Europe. A fragment from a Hedwig beaker has been found in his royal palace in Budapest, so it is a realistic possibility. It can’t, of course, be any more than a guess, but it is a beguiling hypothesis, and it might just be the solution to the long-running puzzle of the Hedwig beakers.

58

Japanese Bronze Mirror

Bronze mirror, from Japan

1100–1200 AD

Most people have thrown a coin or two into a wishing well or a fountain for luck. Every day at the famous Trevi Fountain in Rome, tourists throw in coins worth about 3,000 euros to secure good luck and a return visit to Rome. People have been throwing valuable things into water for thousands of years. It is an extraordinary compulsion, and it hasn’t always been coins tossed with a light-hearted wish; in the past, it was often a deadly serious plea to the gods. In rivers and lakes across Britain archaeologists regularly discover weapons, jewellery and precious metals that were given to the gods thousands of years ago. In the British Museum we have objects from all over the world that were once solemnly or joyously deposited in water. One of the most fascinating is a mirror thrown into a temple pool around 900 years ago in Japan.

In a famous Japanese history called The Great Mirror, written around 1100, the mirror not only has a voice, but the power to reveal Japan to itself:

I am a plain old-fashioned mirror from a bygone age, made of good white metal that stays clear without being polished … I am going to discuss serious matters now. Pay close attention, everyone. You should think, as you listen to me, that you are hearing the Chronicles of Japan …

The British Museum’s mirror was made at about the same time, although it’s only very recently that we’ve found out exactly where it came from and what that new information tells us about the Japan of 900 years ago. The story our mirror can now tell is about lovers and poets, court women and goddesses, priests and emperors.

The mirror is circular, about the size of a saucer, and it sits comfortably in my hand. There isn’t a handle, but it would originally have had a loop fixed to it so that you could hang it from a hook. It is not made of silvered glass – the modern, silver-backed mirror we are all familiar with didn’t come into use until around the sixteenth century. Early mirrors like this bronze one were all made of metal, which was then so highly polished that you could see your face in it.

Like much else in Japanese culture, mirrors first came to Japan from China. Around 1,000 years ago, societies across Eurasia were vigorously trading goods and exchanging ideas and beliefs. Throughout the eighth and ninth centuries Japan had been an energetic participant in these exchanges, particularly with China. But lying right at the end of all the great Asian trade routes and isolated by sea, Japan, unlike almost any other culture, was able to opt out of this interconnected world. It is an option Japan has exercised several times in its history, as it did most strikingly in the year 894, when it stopped all official contact with China and effectively cut itself off from the rest of the world. Untroubled by outside influences or new arrivals, Japan turned inwards for several centuries, a decision which still resonates today, and developed its own highly