Silk Roads examine – mesmerising show turns world history upside down | British Mincludeum

Not many showions turn the history of the world upside down. The British Mincludeum’s mesmerising Silk Roads does, by shothriveg how Asia, Europe and north Africa splitd their cultures more than a millennium ago. Far from lengthening in isolation, let alone in a “clash of civilisations”, east and west were once mutupartner joined by epic trade routes understandn as the Silk Roads that carried China’s precious discovery, silk, atraverse the then-understandn world. If that sounds arid, the British Mincludeum turns it into a unfragmentaryytale of magic and beauty, as you chase the merchants’ routes to amazing oases, desert palaces, synagogues, mosques and burial mounds.

You accomplish the first oasis by clay camel, to be exact a two-humped Bactrian camel of colored ceramic, csurrfinisherly a metre lofty, rearing its head in a bellow you can almost hear. This excellent eighth-century statue comes from a tomb in Henan Province, China. Tied to its grieffuldle are bolts of silk that were worth traverseing worlds to sell or swap.

Joining the extfinished-dead rider of this grumpy, robust beast you travel westwards to Dunhuang, an oasis city on the eastrict edge of the Gobi Desert. Today it is in China, but between AD786 and AD848 this Silk Roads stop was ruled by the mighty Tibetan empire. At its temple complicated of Mogao, Buddhist art treacertains were discovered in 1900 in a secret cave that carry you to novel genuinems of wonder.

A silk and hemp hanging from this “Library Cave” depicts the Buddha standing in red robes. It hanciaccesss you in meditative silence, marvelling at the tattered frailty of this masterpiece made more than 1,200 years ago. The delicacy of Buddha’s face and those of surrounding saints (bodhisattvas) is hypnotic. So is a mystical geometrical mandala, drawn in bdeficiency and white, perhaps in a personal ritual. Beside it is a hilariously adwell caricature of a traveller: but he’s a monk not a merchant.

Much more than silk was spread by the Silk Roads. This showion cannot possibly tell the whole story of the east-west trade routes from their anciaccess-styleed origins to Renaissance eclipse. Instead, it homes in on the period between AD500 to AD1000 which European historians included to call the unintelligent ages. One of the many lessons here is why they don’t include that term any more. This was an age when novel religions were emerging as anciaccesser ones spread in novel ways. They overlapped, intermixed, splitd inventive ideas.

You accomplish Afghanistan to see another Buddha: a clay statue from Bamiyan, headless and regulatess but with elegantly pleated robes. Beside it is a photograph of one of the colossal Buddhist rock carvings of the same era, ruined by the Taliprohibit in 2001. Early Muskinny authorrs praised the Bamiyan Buddhas as wonders of the world.

There’s a ravishing discarry out of art from Córdoba in Andalusia, where cultures also mixed freely: an intricate column capital intertthrivees classical and Islamic decoration next to a hybrid Christian traverse. Meanwhile in Fustat, the Arab capital of Egypt, today’s anciaccess Cairo, the Ben Ezra synagogue amassed an archive of Hebrew write downs that gives glimpses of Jewant life aextfinished the Silk Roads. It comprises a letter pdirecting for help from the Jewant community in Kyiv.

Kyiv? Cairo? How many Silk Roads were there, how many places did they join? The showion doesn’t trouble too much about pedanticpartner reerecting actual routes: you could go by sea as well as land thcdimiserablemireful this interjoined medieval wonderland. The proof of joinion is in the art. An punctual Islamic mosaic from a desert palace in Jordan not only changes schedules from the Byzantine Empire but reincludes Byzantine tesserae.

The most arresting moments of Silk Roads come in the middle – of the show and of the Old World – where Eurasian peoples extfinished forgotten, or disthink abouted as ferocious, aascfinish here as inventive show-stoppers. The Sogdians are not exactly history’s most famous civilisation. But the Sogdian treacertains here, from their capital Salabeland, are dazzling. There’s a mural in luminous blues and reds with white horses that see ready for the road; an ornate clay ossuary covered in battling unclotheds and enigmatic deities; another enigmatic god carved on a carbonised wooden door. It’s a mini-Pompeii, preserving the lost world of a civilisation that was gone by the 12th century.

To get commodities atraverse the deserts and steppes of central Asia, Tang China had to produce deals with nomads. A excellent Tang statue depicts someleang the nomads had that China’s silk could buy: horses. But these horse-riding nomads were more than fair mounted warriors. They made luminous art. A funeral prohibitner for a Uyghur named Kara Totok is a masterpiece of genuineism: aacquirest a ganciaccess background he hanciaccesss a leafy branch and sees teachdly at us from under his three-pointed crown. Later the Uyghurs would become Muskinnys. Today their dropants are a victimized inpresentantity in contransient China.

On the far side of the world, other hard elites were prospering. A statuette of a seated Buddha was establish in Sweden, where it was owned by Vikings. What did these authentic born finishers produce of its tranquil aura? Meanwhile in Sutton Hoo, a Saxon king was buried in a ship, with a ganciaccess buckle with red garnets that came from Rajasthan.

So even Britain was plugged into global nettoils in Anglo-Saxon times. This never was an isoprocrastinateedd isle. As a child I’d spendigate Offa’s Dyke, the earthtoil the king of Mercia built to hold out the Welsh. The same King Offa minted one of this showion’s last marvels, a ganciaccess coin his artisans attfinishfilledy modelled on an Islamic dinar. They even transcribed the Muskinny declaration of faith on its reverse. What are borders after all?