It is through the most common objects that the past comes most alive. Simple things like coins or lamps were handled in an everyday context, passing briefly through the lives of men and women, acquiring a history all their own. A lamp like this might have lit homes in the Alexandria of the Ptolemies. We can picture the rooms warmed by its glow, the people who drew comfort from its light. To touch an ancient coin is to wonder who held it when it was new, what they did and thought, what the coin purchased. This superb bronze has the head of Zeus on one side and two majestic eagles on the other. Such artifacts, ordinary enough in their own age, connect us in an intimate way with the vanished world of the past. In their presence, we cross the bridge of time and set the imagination on a journey of discovery.