Battle of empires brings winter excitement to London's museums

Two of the world's great empires are facing off across London in a battle for cultural supremacy this winter. On one side we have Byzantium, spreading 1000 years of art and history over the Royal Academy's primary display rooms. A mile away, Babylon spirals around the top floor of the British Museum's reading room.

I don't know if the cultural supremos of London's museums get together to coordinate blockbuster exhibits, but this was a nice piece of synergy. The compare and contrast element of the experience is particularly fulfilling, especially if ... as I did ... you see the exhibitions in the same week.

Let's start with Byzantium. While still exotic, most people have at least a sketchy idea of the basics of the Byzantine empire. Most know that it was founded by Constantine when the Roman empire split into Eastern and Western halves, famed for its magnificently wealthy and art-laden capital city Constantinople (now Istanbul), was glittering and cultured while Europe went through the dark ages, had something to do with the crusades and eventually fell to the Arabs.

Very few people can go into any detail or have a real appreciation for the cultural legacy the Byzantines left behind. You're left in no doubt that these people did things on a grand scale from the first room, where perhaps the biggest chandelier I've ever seen greets you. It's copper, ornate yet a bit dark and brutal (aspects, I believe, of much of Byzantine art) and must have been spectacular glittering with hundreds of candles.

The next few rooms are magnificent. They give you an overview of the history of the empire, mostly based around the two blockbuster characters: Constantine and Justinian. The artifacts on display give you a rounded picture of Byzantine life, from grand monuments to home decor and tombs, jewelry to religious objects. In these early rooms I was most captivated by the virtuosity of the ivory carvers. There are multiple cases here of book covers and small chests made from the stuff. They're small, ornate, and the kind of thing I've walked right past in other museums while heading for the bigger objects in the room. Clearly, I should have stopped. The detail here is jaw-dropping. Saints no bigger than your finger whose faces convey detailed emotion. Animals an inch or two long so perfect they could jump out into life. Backgrounds of trees and architectural elements carved with such exactitude they're like photos of life in Byzantium.

Elsewhere I lingered over a large chalice once reputed to be the holy grail. The legend is fun but the ornate foliage of vine and grape that comprised its exterior was what really got me. There's a gold and cloisonne enamel icon of the archangel Michael, probably two and a half feet high, that stuns with its ornate detail. Cloisonne is produced by creating borders between the colours with tiny metal wires, filling the sections you've created with glass and firing it. It's detailed work, requiring enormous skill and and phenomenal manual dexterity. I've never seen enamel used to create such precision before, down to expressions on thumbnail-sized faces and details on minute items of clothing.

At room six the traditional icons start in. Not gold, jewel and enamel, but dark, brooding saints staring down at you from wooden panels with looks of pain and suffering suffusing every brow. I must admit, this is where I've never warmed to Eastern Orthodoxy. These people all look miserable. It isn't much of an inspiration to live a good life if my reward is to spend eternity in the gloom with these killjoys. Admittedly, religion was critical to the Byzantines and the icon is important. But did we really have to fill the last four rooms of the exhibition with them? I think I would have been more satisfied had I left mid-way through.

Byzantium was impressive, but left me unsatisfied. I wanted more historical perspective. More personalities and events. More architecture. More, generally, of a big picture about this empire. I wanted the excellent lecture series by Lars Brownworth I downloaded off iTunes brought to life. The Royal Academy of Arts, unsurprisingly given its mission, took a strictly art historical perspective and left my appetite stimulated, but unfulfilled.

What I was looking for, clearly, was the approach the British Museum curators took with Babylon. Here was my historical context. My mix of art, architecture, event and cultural legacy. The personalities. The stories. Sadly, there's much less to look at here. We don't have a heck of a lot left of Babylon to dazzle us. The backbone of this exhibit is old documents: cylinder seals and clay tablets. This is where the British Museum has always been great, however. They weave together a story from a variety of sources, making the most of what they have.

The most impressive stuff is in the first room. They've augmented their own fragments of the magnificent glazed tiles from the Lion Gates of Babylon with others from museums around the world, assembling them to give you some scope of the processional route that was one of the architectural blockbusters of the ancient world. A detailed architectural model in the centre of the room gives you a clear idea of what the whole thing looked like. Granted, it's a dim approximation of what you can see in Berlin (see blog for June 22 '07), but given that most people will never get there, this is a wonderful approximation.

The rest of the exhibit takes the logical approach of myth and reality. Most of what most people know about Babylon, if they know anything at all, comes from legend. And much of that from the Bible which was, let's face it, spinning furiously against their Babylonian enemies. So while the ancient Greeks give us the charming hanging gardens of Babylon, our Hebrew sources contribute the Tower of Babel, the Babylonian exile and the collapse of empire under a God-sent invasion. Rooms explore all these things, supplementing the authentic Babylonian stuff (scrolls, tablets, wall fragments) with paintings, books and items from European history. The European tradition has been endlessly fascinated with the Babylonians, and it's put to good use here.

I was particularly impressed by the Tower of Babel room, which combined medieval manuscripts, Dutch paintings, a model of a real Babylonian tower and descriptive text to examine the legend through history and give you an idea of the truth that probably stood behind it. The end of the exhibit is also a highlight, with a room showing how modern culture continues to be influenced by, and borrow from, this bit of the ancient world. As you leave there's short film showing Babylon today. It's been a challenged site recently: first thanks to tasteless and archaeologically insensitive rebuilding by Saddam Hussein, second by the American army who but a military base here at the start of the war. (Someone finally clued in and moved it, but the damage has been done and toxic waste has been added to the problems of working here.)

I remember marvelling, when I saw the Babylonian artifacts in Berlin, that I was actually there. As a child I never thought I would get behind the iron curtain to see that magnificent museum. As an adult, it's hard to believe I will live to see a day where I can safely travel to Baghdad and wander out to the ruins of Babylon.

Though both exhibits fell short of perfect, they each inspired me to want to learn more. And that, I always figure, is what a good show should do. I may not be able to get to Baghdad, but Istanbul is open and waiting. Thanks to London's imperial battle, that trip has moved up my wish list.