Skip to main content
Read page text
page 18
Orientations | Volume 55 Number 5 | SEPTEMBER/OCTOBER 2024 Silk Roads at the British Museum Yu-ping Luk Over the past few decades, there have been many exhibitions about the Silk Road, focusing on different regions, topics, and time periods. This autumn, the British Museum will bring a fresh and ambitious take on this captivating subject in a major exhibition entitled ‘Silk Roads’ opening in the Sainsbury Exhibitions Gallery (26 September 2024 to 23 February 2025). The image for the exhibition poster plays on the popular, romanticized image of Silk Road caravan traders trekking across deserts. But the exhibition goes beyond sand and spices. Instead, it defines the Silk Roads—plural—in their broadest sense: as interlocking, multidirectional networks that spanned Afro-Eurasia’s sprawling land, sea, and river routes, along which people, objects, and ideas moved and came into contact. To refine its enormous scope, this exhibition takes a slice of the Silk Roads’ long history, focusing on the five centuries between about 500 and 1000 CECE. This period will be familiar to audiences interested in the history of China, as it encompasses the Tang dynasty (618–907), with its cosmopolitan capital city of Chang’an, as well as the remarkable finds from the ‘Library Cave’ (Cave 17) of the Mogao Caves at Dunhuang. They were part of a much wider transcontinental network of connections that spanned Asia, Africa and Europe, from Japan to Ireland, from the Arctic to Madagascar. Vast regions across Afro-Eurasia were brought together under great polities that overlapped in time. Apart from the Tang dynasty, these included the Islamic empire that 1 Buddha figure Excavated at Helgö, Uppland province, Sweden Probably made in the Swat Valley, Pakistan; late 6th–mid-7th century Copper alloy, silver, glass, tin, niello, and probably gold; height 8.4 cm, width 6.4 cm Historiska Museet, Stockholm Photo: Ola Myrin, The Swedish History Museum/SHM (CC BY 4.0) 18
page 19
emerged from Arabia, a resurgent Byzantium in the Mediterranean under Justinian (d. 565), and the Carolingian empire (c. 800–87) under Charlemagne (d. 814). The major religions of Buddhism, Christianity, and Islam spread and were elevated to the position of state religions, connecting the island extremities of Eurasia (Britain and Japan) to the continent. The arrival of Scandinavian Vikings in Newfoundland in the Americas around the year 1000 provides a cogent terminus to the timeline. Drawing on the strengths of the British Museum as a world museum, the exhibition is co-curated by three curators with different areas of expertise (Sue Brunning, curator of early medieval European collections; Yu-ping Luk, curator of Chinese paintings, prints, and the Central Asian collection; and Elisabeth O’Connell, Byzantine world curator) and brings together important objects from nearly all the collection departments. This is supplemented by major loans from 29 national and international lenders, including new partnerships with institutions in Uzbekistan and Tajikistan, recognizing the importance of Central Asia in the history of the Silk Roads. The exhibition opens with a small bronze Buddha figure seated on a lotus pedestal (fig. 1). It is thought to have been made in the Swat Valley in present-day Pakistan between the late 6th and mid-7th centuries. The figure, however, was not found in the Swat Valley or anywhere else in Asia. Instead, it was discovered on the small island of Helgö in present-day Sweden during the excavation of buildings dating to around the year 800. This object somehow crossed thousands of kilometres to reach Scandinavia. Its discovery raises questions about the true extent of connections during the period 500 to 1000. From this surprising beginning, the exhibition will take audiences on a journey across AfroEurasia, starting from Japan and ending in Britain. 2 Epitaph of Mino no Okamaro (661–728) Excavated at Aoyamadai, Ikoma-shi, Nara Japan; Nara period (710–794), dated 730 Bronze; 29.7 × 20.9 × 0.2 cm Tokyo National Museum, Tokyo Important Cultural Property Photo: TNM Image Archives 19

Page Text

View plaintext

Orientations | Volume 55 Number 5 | SEPTEMBER/OCTOBER 2024

Silk Roads at the British Museum Yu-ping Luk

Over the past few decades, there have been many exhibitions about the Silk Road, focusing on different regions, topics, and time periods. This autumn, the British Museum will bring a fresh and ambitious take on this captivating subject in a major exhibition entitled ‘Silk Roads’ opening in the Sainsbury Exhibitions Gallery (26 September 2024 to 23 February 2025). The image for the exhibition poster plays on the popular, romanticized image of Silk Road caravan traders trekking across deserts. But the exhibition goes beyond sand and spices. Instead, it defines the Silk Roads—plural—in their broadest sense: as interlocking, multidirectional networks that spanned Afro-Eurasia’s sprawling land, sea, and river routes, along which people, objects, and ideas moved and came into contact.

To refine its enormous scope, this exhibition takes a slice of the Silk Roads’ long history, focusing on the five centuries between about 500 and 1000 CECE. This period will be familiar to audiences interested in the history of China, as it encompasses the Tang dynasty (618–907), with its cosmopolitan capital city of Chang’an, as well as the remarkable finds from the ‘Library Cave’ (Cave 17) of the Mogao

Caves at Dunhuang. They were part of a much wider transcontinental network of connections that spanned Asia, Africa and Europe, from Japan to Ireland, from the Arctic to Madagascar. Vast regions across Afro-Eurasia were brought together under great polities that overlapped in time. Apart from the Tang dynasty, these included the Islamic empire that

1 Buddha figure

Excavated at Helgö, Uppland province, Sweden

Probably made in the Swat Valley, Pakistan; late 6th–mid-7th century Copper alloy, silver, glass, tin, niello, and probably gold; height 8.4 cm, width 6.4 cm

Historiska Museet, Stockholm

Photo: Ola Myrin, The Swedish History Museum/SHM (CC BY 4.0)

18

read next page

My Bookmarks

Buy this Book
Skip to main content