LONDON.- A Silk Road Oasis: Life in Ancient Dunhuang (27 September 2024 – 23 February 2025) at the British Library features over 50 manuscripts, printed documents and pictorial works, many from the ‘Library Cave’ in the cave complex of Mogao and on public display for the first time. The exhibition offers an intimate glimpse into the diverse cultural, religious and civic life in the town of Dunhuang in northwest China during the first millennium of the Common Era (CE).
One of the most important archaeological finds of the 20th century was the discovery of Mogao Cave 17, often known as the ‘Library Cave’, near the oasis town of Dunhuang in present-day Gansu province, China. Sealed for nearly 900 years and containing tens of thousands of manuscripts, paintings, printed documents and objects spanning literature, theology, medicine, politics and art, the contents present an astonishing time capsule detailing life in and around Dunhuang, a vital resting point along the Silk Roads trading routes in the first millennium CE.
A Silk Road Oasis: Life in Ancient Dunhuang follows a cast of characters to reveal the cultural, religious and artistic exchanges that took place along the Silk Roads during the first millennium CE. Cultural and artistic life in the city is explored through the stories of the scribe, the printer and the artist, the intricate and international network of diplomatic and mercantile exchanges along the trading routes is revealed through stories from the merchant, the diplomat and the fortune-teller and the enduring legacy of Dunhuang as a site of pilgrimage and worship is illustrated through the Buddhist nun and the lay Buddhist.
This year marks the 30th anniversary of the International Dunhuang Programme, a global collaboration committed to digitising, preserving and increasing access to the manuscripts from the Eastern Silk Roads, and the exhibition brings together documents and objects from Dunhuang, many for the very first time.
Highlights include:
• The Diamond Sutra (868 AD), the world’s earliest complete printed book with a date, and one of the most influential Mahayana sutras in East Asia
• The Dunhuang star chart (649-700), the earliest known manuscript atlas of the night sky from any civilisation
• A rubbing of the Stele of Sulaiman, a carved stone slab that was erected in 1348 at the Mogao Caves, on display for the first time
• A copy of the Diamond Sutra written in the scribe’s own blood, considered an act of powerful sincerity when copying Buddhist scriptures, on display for the first time
• The Old Tibetan Annals (641-761), the earliest surviving historical document in Tibetan
• A manuscript fragment dating from the 9th century about the prophet Zoroaster or Zarathusra, nearly 400 years older than any other surviving Zoroastrian scripture
• The longest surviving manuscript text in the Old Turkic script, a Turkic omen text known as the Irk Bitig or Book of Omens (930 or 942)
• A paper stencil (800-1000) believed to create the thousand-Buddha motif featured on the ceilings of many Mogao Caves
• One of the most important and complete manuscripts among the Old Uyghur Manichaean texts, the Xuastuanift, a confessional book of Manichaean Uyghurs, on display for the first time
• A recently conserved 9th-10th century painting depicting the 11-headed manifestation of Avalokiteshvara, the bodhisattva of compassion, on display for the first time
A Silk Road Oasis: Life in Ancient Dunhuang also features an immersive soundscape recreating the sounds of the ancient Silk Road based on recordings from the British Library’s sound archive and the China Database for Traditional Music, coordinated by Dr. Xiaoshi Wei. The soundscape blends contemporary material from artists across historic Silk Road nations, such as Iran and Kazakhstan, and includes newly commissioned works by Tibetan folk artist Ngawang Lodup, Uyghur virtuoso Shorhet Nur and Chinese musician Wu Fei.
Mélodie Doumy, Lead Curator, Chinese Collections (Stein and Hoernle) and International Dunhuang Programme manager at the British Library, said: 'We are incredibly excited to provide a glimpse into the lives of the ordinary people who were the heart and soul of the Dunhuang oasis, making it such a fascinating melting-pot of languages, cultures and religions. We hope to show how these stories from the first millennium still resonate in our contemporary world, particularly in a cosmopolitan hub like London, which a number of diverse communities call home.’
