I spent the morning looking at artefacts from the history of Iran, learning about the extraordinary antiquity of the region, demonstrated in the sophistication of objects from the third millennium BC, the layer upon layer of different cultures of production before the invasion by Alexander the Great, the beauty of the gold objects, and the early influence and mimicking of objects from China.   It reminded me of visiting Tabriz, Isfahan, Persepolis and Herat in the early 1970s, inspired by reading Robert Byron.