ATHENS (AFP) — An exhibition mapping the 11-century history of the Byzantine Empire opens next month at the Royal Academy of Arts in London, bringing together 400 items from several of the world's top museums, organisers said in Athens on Tuesday.
Jointly organised by the Royal Academy and Greece's Benaki Museum, which put forward around a quarter of the items on display, the exhibition is unique in spanning the entire history of the Byzantine Empire from birth to downfall through art, religious practice and daily life, they said.
"The last exhibit to cover Byzantium from 330 to 1453 AD was in 1964 in Athens," exhibit curator Maria Vassilaki told a media presentation.
The October 25-March 22 exhibition includes artifacts that have never or rarely travelled outside their respective countries, including jewellery from Cyprus' Lamboussa Treasure and icons from St Catherine's Monastery on Mount Sinai, organisers said.
Among the items is the crown of a 9th century Byzantine emperor, a pair of 5th century sandals belonging to a boy in Egypt and a 6th century gilt-edged chalice from Antioch that was once believed to contain the Holy Grail.
"This exhibition promises to be one of the Royal Academy of Arts' greatest presentations," its secretary and chief executive Charles Saumarez Smith said.
"The New York Metropolitan Museum took three exhibitions to show the history of Byzantium, we're doing it in one," he told a media presentation.
Greek Prime Minister Costas Karamanlis is expected to inaugurate the exhibit (www.royalacademy.org.uk/byzantium) in October, Saumarez Smith said.
But organisers were bitter over the failure of negotiations with the reclusive Orthodox monastic community of Mount Athos for the loan of other rare Byzantine artifacts that would have added further lustre to the exhibition.
"Hours of negotiation proved fruitless," said Benaki Museum director Angelos Delivorias.
Efforts to secure items on loan from the island of Patmos and the monasteries of Meteora in central Greece, both equally important pilgrimage sites, also failed.
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