The Silk Road still casts a spell, but was the ancient trading route just a western invention?
Two dazzling new exhibitions at the British Library and British Museum show the riches of the supposed east-west link but also highlight problems with the whole idea
L ast week two magnificent exhibitions opened in London. Both have as their theme the idea of the Silk Road, an overland trade route said to stretch ever since antiquity all the way across Asia from China to Turkey and hence to Mediterranean Europe.
The show at the British Library is entitled A Silk Road Oasis: Life in Ancient Dunhuang and focuses on the extraordinary haul of ancient documents found in the Mogao Buddhist cave temples by a Chinese Daoist priest and sold by him to the explorer and archaeologist Aurel Stein in 1907.
Its treasures include the celebrated ninth-century Diamond Sutra, the earliest clearly dated and complete printed book in the world, as well as the Dunhuang star chart, the earliest known atlas of the night sky from any civilisation. The show is imaginatively mounted, with some of the documents read out in wonderful audio clips. There are not many places in the world today where you can hear ancient Sogdian love poetry read out in the original, but the British Library has risen to the challenge.
The British Museum’s Silk Roads show is even more spectacular, unquestionably the most fabulous array of treasures to be seen in London in recent times. It guides us all the way from Japan and Korea to East Anglia and even Rhynie in Aberdeenshire, dazzling us with rare treasures of gold, jade, Chinese silk and exquisitely carved ivories gathered from collections around the world.
