纪录片《大英博物馆世界简史》 026奥克瑟斯战车模型（2）

Centred in modern Iran, the vast Persian Empire ran from Turkey and Egypt in the west to Afghanistan and Pakistan in the east. To control an empire like this required land transport on a quite unprecedented scale, and so the Persian Empire is the first great 'road' empire of history.

In front of me now [in the British Museum] is a chariot made of solid gold and pulled by four golden horses. It's easy to imagine a chariot like this racing along those great Persian imperial roads. It's got two figures in it: the driver, who stands holding the reins, and the much larger and clearly very important passenger, who sits on a bench at his side. He is probably meant to be a high-up administrator, visiting the distant province that he rules on behalf of the King of Persia.

And this chariot was found in a very distant province, right on the far eastern edge of the empire, somewhere on the borders of modern Tajikistan and Afghanistan. It's part of a huge hoard of gold and silver objects, which for over a hundred years have formed one of the great collections here at the British Museum.

This magnificent chariot sits quite comfortably on the palm of my hand, where it looks like an exquisite toy for a privileged child. We can't be certain the chariot was in fact a toy; it could have been made as an offering to the gods, either asking them for a favour or thanking them for one. But whatever it meant then, this tiny golden chariot allows us today to conjure up a whole empire.