Ancient Art and Architecture/Alamy
I had no idea, when I went to see Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny, that the eponymous artefact would turn out to be the Antikythera mechanism (pictured above), the most wondrous creation of the ancient world. The device is mind-blowing: a calculating machine, sometimes called the world’s first computer, that was made in the 1st century BC. Nothing like it would be built for another 1000 years.
When I reviewed Jo Marchant’s riveting account of the discovery of the mechanism, I said it was like an Indiana Jones adventure – and it seems that writer Jez Butterworth…
