Luxury from Crete, copper from Cyprus

“Islanders: The Making of the Mediterranean” will open at the Fitzwilliam Museum, the University of Cambridge’s principal museum, on Friday.

The exhibition takes visitors on a 4,000-year journey from life in the ancient Mediterranean to today with objects mostly from Crete, Cyprus and Sardinia. Highlights include exquisite pottery, jewelry and bronze figures from the palaces, sanctuaries and caves of Minoan Crete, and a collection of clay-modeled people, gods, sphinxes and horse-drawn chariots from the Agia Irini sanctuary in Cyprus.

“The narrative of the exhibition is first and foremost a story of mobility and connection between the peoples of the Eastern Mediterranean, characteristics that appear at different times,” said curator Dr Anastasia Christophilopoulou.

“We see it in the Bronze and Iron Ages and in the Classical, but also in Roman times, about which the general perception is that there was a homogeneity because of the Roman conquest. Even then, however, there were very particular expressions of island identity.”