Roman empire artefacts come to Australia for first time | 7.30 [0:00-5:00]

You want to take off your clothes? You want to take off your clothes? Oh, wow. This ancient sarcophagus is 2,000 years old. Yes, it's one of the best we have because it's entire. It's full. It's not crack. Wang almost a tonne. This marble coffin is one of more than 150 Roman artifacts that are in Australia for the first time. When you see the objects and they're not this big, they're this big. You're really a struck by the power and how ancient they are. 730 was given exclusive access to the delicate operation to transport the items from Italy to the Melbourne Museum. Curators from the National Roman Museum and the National Archaeological Museum in Florence carefully packed the statues, bars and portraits. We make a very long process to give our objects as a loan to other museums. We check each objects. We map all the cracks, all the chips, everything on them. Archaeologist Dr. Barbara Abade has travelled with the exhibits from Florence. Most of them date back to the first century and the third. The exposition gives like a glimpse of many aspects of ancient Roman lives about religion, about daily lives, about the image of power because we have lots of emperors, portraits. One of Dr. Abade's favourite artifacts is this medallion with an image of the Colosseum and it's the first time it's ever left Italy. They were given to special people as an accomplishment for their deeds, their down. It's a wonderful statue of Afrodite Venus, with still colour in it. It's very particular because it's not so easy to find. Still the colour, the pigments on the statue. Sylvia Bogini is a restaurant from the National Roman Museum. She says there's still mystery around the origin of some of these pieces, including who was interred in this sarcophagus and the reason behind its design. So this is about prisoners, but normally the people, the owner, choose the decoration or choose the sarcophagus before dying. Is there a reason why prisoners are the design? Who knows, maybe it can be that it was a military person working in their army or maybe who knows, it's not so clear. We have many times this scene, war scene, but we don't know exactly why. It was, I mean, celebrating maybe victory of something. Many pieces are made from stone or bronze. I'm required constant climate control, but the marble items won't deteriorate as easily. Like this one of Jupiter, the ancient god of sky, thunder and lightning. This was part of an architecture because this is not a statue. This is a relief, a very high relief, so we have to imagine it on a big building. And I think this is from the 2nd century AD. These ancient treasures are part of the exhibition Rhone, Empire Power People, which opens tomorrow and will run until October 25th at the Melbourne Museum. Deborah Tout Smith is a senior curator. I think an exhibition like this helps us all learn things about ourselves, as well as the world around us and the ancient world too. It shows us the interconnectedness of people and things, places and times. Sylvia Bogueini says the exhibition is essential for anyone wanting to understand the roots of Western civilization. The beginning of our Western civilization becomes with Roman. Maybe before with Greece, but Roma were a little bit more important for buildings, for roads, for a broad water inside the town.