Living with the Gods

Neil MacGregor concludes his series about shared beliefs. He began with the Lion Man, an object created 40,000 years ago, and now reflects on the present, on the future and on hopeProducer Paul Kobrak The series is produced in partnership with the British Museum, with the assistance of Dr Christopher Harding, University of Edinburgh. Photograph (c) The Trustees of the British Museum.

Neil MacGregor continues his series on shared beliefs with a look at the attempts of some faiths to establish a state of their own.An over-printed coin from 2nd century Jerusalem tells of the failed attempt of Shimon bar Kokhba to lay claim to a state for the Jews, free from Roman rule - while a white cotton flag, framed in pale blue, flew over Sudan after it had been taken by Mahdist forces and before the Islamic state collapsed in the mid 1890s.Producer Paul Kobrak Produced in partnership with the British Museum Photograph (c) The Trustees of the British Museum.

Neil MacGregor continues his series on shared beliefs with a focus on those faiths seen as a threat to the state.A plain board, to be found on a 17th-century Japanese roadside, offers generous rewards to anyone who informs on Christians. At almost exactly the same time a print from France depicts the officially sanctioned destruction of a Huguenot Church just a few miles east of Paris. Producer Paul KobrakProduced in partnership with the British Museum Photograph (c) The Trustees of the British Museum.

Neil MacGregor focuses on societies which aimed to live without religious beliefs. Neil examines a revolutionary clock, from around 1795, created in the wake of the French Revolution, and designed to mark a new way of living: in an age of reason, there would no longer be royalism or religion in France. A poster from the Soviet Union celebrates the apparent triumph of scientific progress: the cosmonaut Yuri Gagarin floats in space, looks out and proclaims 'There is no God!'. It seems that the heavens are empty of divine beings, but full, instead, of starry promise. Producer Paul Kobrak Produced in partnership with the British Museum Photograph (c) The Trustees of the British Museum.

Neil MacGregor continues his series on shared beliefs with a focus on earthly rulers and the gods. Queens and kings may be priests of the gods, or their representatives. They may be incarnations - or even gods themselves. Or the relationship may be so close that to divide spiritual from temporal power at all would simply make no sense. Neil examines these ideas, with the help of objects including a bronze staff belonging to the Oba of Benin, and a bronze vessel from China, whose inscription suggests that its dynastic leaders enjoyed a mandate from heaven. Producer Paul Kobrak The series is produced in partnership with the British Museum, with the assistance of Dr Christopher Harding, University of Edinburgh. Photograph (c) The Trustees of the British Museum.

Neil MacGregor continues his series about the expression of shared beliefs with a focus on how faiths co-exist in India.Producer Paul KobrakProduced in partnership with the British Museum Photograph (c) The Trustees of the British Museum.

Neil MacGregor continues his series about the expression of shared beliefs with a focus on gods can reach new communities, and how those communities can then adapt and change the faiths. Producer Paul KobrakProduced in partnership with the British Museum Photograph (c) The Trustees of the British Museum.

Neil MacGregor continues his series about the expression of shared beliefs with a focus on societies who believe that they share the landscape with co-inhabitants who are not visible but are present. Such belief systems can be found in places such as the Pacific island nation of Vanuatu. It is difficult, Neil MacGregor suggests, to express this relationship with the landscape in the English language. Words such as spirits, gods or beings do not adequately convey the nature of the co-inhabitants - and although these co-inhabitants cannot always be seen, they are always there, on the other side of the leaf. Producer Paul Kobrak Produced in partnership with the British Museum Photograph (c) The Trustees of the British Museum.

Neil MacGregor's series on the role and expression of beliefs continues with a focus on societies and faiths with a single god. Using objects from both ancient Babylon and ancient Egypt, Neil examines how one god could become central to worship in these societies. Producer Paul Kobrak Produced in partnership with the British Museum Photograph (c) The Trustees of the British Museum.

Neil MacGregor's series on the role and expression of beliefs continues with a focus on societies living with many gods. In the mid-1840s, a Roman earthenware jar was dug from the earth near Felmingham Hall in Norfolk. Inside, excavators found several belief systems, all mixed up together - for buried in the pot was a jumble of gods, deities of different kinds and origins, that tell us what it meant for people in Roman Britain around the year 250 to be living with many gods. The great ancient Mesopotamian Epic of Gilgamesh includes a narrative with striking similarities to - but important differences from - the story of Noah in the Bible. Here a council of gods is persuaded to unleash a great flood to wipe out humankind. Producer Paul Kobrak The series is produced in partnership with the British Museum, with the assistance of Dr Christopher Harding, University of Edinburgh. Photograph (c) The Trustees of the British Museum.

Neil MacGregor's series on the role and expression of beliefs continues with a reflection on faiths which focus on the word rather than the image. A striking cobalt blue mosque lamp, from around 1570, shows an Islamic way of doing honour to the word: calligraphy. In Jewish religious ceremonies a yad - a small silver rod with a little hand and a pointing index finger - is used to follow the text during readings from the Torah, to avoid any damage to the delicate parchment.Producer Paul Kobrak Produced in partnership with the British Museum Photograph (c) The Trustees of the British Museum.

Neil MacGregor continues his series about the expression of shared beliefs with a focus on images which seek to change the viewer's behaviour. A small coloured wood-cut, created in the Netherlands around 1500, offers a particularly gruesome rendering of Christ's crucifixion. Christ is pictured with blood pouring from his torso, his head, his legs and his outstretched arms. These are not realistically arranged droplets; instead we see a flurry of vertical red strokes, tightly packed together and evenly spaced. Neil MacGregor reflects on the purpose of this image. He also considers a serene figure of the Buddha, a halo behind his head, already in his enlightened state. Producer Paul KobrakProduced in partnership with the British Museum Photograph (c) The Trustees of the British Museum.

Neil MacGregor continues his series about the expression of shared beliefs with a focus on how we come to comprehend sacred images. Our understanding of the rock art created by the San people of southern Africa over many centuries is helped by written accounts, so that what first appears to be an image of a hunting expedition becomes a record of a spiritual journey into another realm of experience. "For many years it was a matter of gaze and guess," says David Lewis Williams, an authority on rock art: "You gaze at it, and if you gaze long enough, your guess will take you close to what it's all about - and I'm afraid that's not the case, but we don't have to gaze and guess any more."In the British Museum, a small 19th century Japanese shrine shows the spirits coming to visit a long-settled agricultural society. The curved doors of a small wooden box open to reveal, inside, a shimmering world of carved gilded wood, and a scene to which Japanese viewers would bring different interpretations. Producer Paul KobrakProduced in partnership with the British Museum Photograph (c) The Trustees of the British Museum.

Neil MacGregor continues his series on the expression of shared beliefs with a focus on the making of divine images. For the painter of a Russian religious icon, the paramount purpose is the continuation of a tradition, in which the painter seeks only to take his proper place, creating an image which opens a gateway to the divine. The Hindu goddess Durga is at the centre of the popular annual festival of Durga Puja, where communities create images of the goddess in everyday materials - clay, wood, straw and oil paint - which then are endowed with a transcendental character. Producer Paul Kobrak Produced in partnership with the British Museum Photograph (c) The Trustees of the British Museum.

Neil MacGregor's series on the role and expression of beliefs continues this week with a focus on images. In Mexico, the image of Our Lady of Guadalupe came not from the hand of an artist, but was directly given from heaven - according to its history. Our Lady of Guadalupe is now the most powerful of presiding images, and the Basilica of Guadalupe near Mexico City is said to be the most visited Roman Catholic pilgrimage site in the world. The sanctuary of the goddess Artemis in the great trading city of Ephesus, now in western Turkey, was by far the most celebrated temple of the antique Mediterranean, and the cult of Artemis spread eastwards towards the Black Sea, and westwards towards Spain. Artemis was thought to protect the vulnerable at their moments of greatest personal danger. Neil MacGregor also visits a shrine devoted to a woman sometimes perceived as a contemporary protectoress. Producer Paul Kobrak The series is produced in partnership with the British Museum, with the assistance of Dr Christopher Harding, University of Edinburgh. Photograph (c) The Trustees of the British Museum.

Neil MacGregor continues his series on the expression of shared beliefs in communities around the world and across time, and focuses on festivals, and their role in shaping a communal identity.Producer Paul KobrakProduced in partnership with the British Museum Photograph (c) The Trustees of the British Museum.

Neil MacGregor continues his series on the expression of shared beliefs in communities around the world and across time, and focuses on pilgrimage, and its role in Christianity, Buddhism and Islam. Producer Paul KobrakProduced in partnership with the British Museum Photograph (c) The Trustees of the British Museum.

Neil MacGregor continues his series on the expression of shared beliefs in communities around the world and across time, and focuses on sacrifice.. Displayed in the British Museum is a finely-crafted Aztec knife, dating from around 1500, with a richly-decorated handle. It had a brutal purpose - human sacrifice. In ancient Greece, animal sacrifice was a vital ritual for connection with the deities: the grounds of a Greek temple were in part a sacred public slaughter-house. Producer Paul KobrakProduced in partnership with the British Museum Photograph (c) The Trustees of the British Museum.

Neil MacGregor continues his series on the expression of shared beliefs in communities around the world and across time, and focuses on offerings. High in the Andes in Colombia, the indigenous Muisca population consigned highly-wrought gold figurines to the waters of Lake Guatavita. Records of the treasures stored in the Parthenon, Athens, dating from around 400BC, reveal numerous gifts for the goddess Athena - gifts with a double role. The Parthenon was also a kind of central bank, capable of operating as a lender of last resort, creating an intimate connection between the temple of a goddess and the finance of the state. Producer Paul KobrakProduced in partnership with the British Museum Photograph (c) The Trustees of the British Museum.

Neil MacGregor's series on the role and expression of beliefs continues with a focus on the creation of sacred spaces, built for encountering or engaging with the divine.Stone tablets in the British Museum detail how a temple was designed and formed in Mesopotamia about 4000 years ago - the first sacred space for which we have a written record. It was a god's home, complete with private areas crafted to meet his every need: kitchens and dining rooms, family rooms and spaces for guests. Architect Aidan Potter reflects on the ideas and ideals behind the design of the Sacred Heart Cathedral in Kericho, Kenya, consecrated in 2015, and Neil views the original models - starting with a curled cardboard sleeve, used on a disposable coffee cup, which Aidan shaped to suggest the high inverted V-shaped roof Producer Paul Kobrak The series is produced in partnership with the British Museum, with the assistance of Dr Christopher Harding, University of Edinburgh. Photograph (c) The Trustees of the British Museum.