Is it odd that just as we set out to do our God issue, the Holy Grail turned up in Mayfair at the Royal Academy of Arts?  Maybe it’s a coincidence, maybe its divine providence, who knows?  But it was definitely worth a look. Will Bingley went along... and found a fraud.

There’s a strange attraction to icons like the Grail, a level of intrigue that doesn’t really have anything to do with religion, driven more by a mix of old school pagan mysticism and society’s lack of spiritual direction.

Viewing it objectively, the Grail myth is particularly absurd. Yes, it is a potent symbol. The cup signifies life, it signifies sharing and community and so on. But, there are lots of symbols out there. I mean why create such an elaborate list of “myths and fairytales” around this one symbol? Why has it spawned so many stories, mysteries and conspiracy theories? Why are we so obsessed with what is essentially a piece of ancient crockery. Feeling like I had to put an end to the madness I went down to the Royal Academy’s Byzantium 330 – 1453 exhibition to see for myself what all the fuss was about.

As it turned out the grail on exhibition, 'The Antioch Chalice', was never going to impress.  Sitting in a little glass box in the midst of all Byzantium’s spoils, it isn’t a remotely prepossessing object. When you get closer and read the little note at its base, which describes it as “widely discredited” and a “common lamp”, it appears even less so. If there was any real cause for mystery here, it should be how such an obvious fraud - an artefact that is the sixth century equivalent of a gilded Ikea light fitting - could ever draw such a large crowd of paying punters.

But this is where the Grail myth starts. In fact, this is where all religious myths start. Faced with a shallow forgery, faced with a void, a myth or a faith springs up to fill the gap. Standing beside this faux Grail you can actually see the process in action. When we first got to it, a little girl turned to an old woman and asked almost on cue, “If this isn’t the real one, then where is it?”. If this is a fake, then the real thing must be out there somewhere, otherwise there wouldn’t be a fake, would there? And if we can’t see it, if we can’t actually hold it, then it must be important - the greater our ignorance, the greater our presumption and nd the more creative we get about whatever mystery it is that 'must' fill the black hole in our understanding.

That this ignorance can act as a proof of anything is a particularly human notion, and a particularly flawed one. At its worst it has contributed to the deaths of many hundreds of thousands of people over many centuries. While at best it has visited such evil on us as the Da Vinci Code. Either way, the sight of this lamp/Grail doesn’t inspire much confidence in humanity, and pleasingly decadent as the rest of this exhibition may be, it doesn’t tell us anything new about Byzantium either.

Byzantium 330 – 1453 continues at the Royal Academy of Arts until 22 Mar 09. For more information, visitwww.royalacademy.org.uk