A Silk Road Oasis: Life in Ancient Dunhuang

A Silk Road Oasis: Life in Ancient Dunhuang

The oasis of Dunhuang, at the edge of the Gobi Desert, was once a bustling town on the famous Silk Road connecting China and the Mediterranean. Discover the personal stories of those who lived, travelled through, worked, and worshipped here more than 1,000 years ago. Explore an astonishing time capsule that opens windows onto the intimate worlds of artists and scribes, merchants and fortune-tellers, diplomats, Buddhists and nuns.

Named “Blazing Beacon” after the watchtowers along its walls, Dunhuang was once a vital meeting point at the gateway to China. The routes that converged here ran through Constantinople in the West and Japan in the East. But there was more to this verdant oasis than trade. For over 1000 years, Dunhuang was also an important pilgrimage site, a cultural melting pot where ideas, technologies and art flowed freely.
 
This exhibition provides a rare glimpse into the ordinary lives of people long ago through the remarkable contents of the Library Cave, part of the Buddhist cave complex of Mogao, where a wealth of manuscripts, documents and artworks remained sealed for nearly 900 years. Detailing life in and around Dunhuang during the first millennium CE, the documents include personal letters and wills encompassing multiple languages, faiths and cultures including Buddhism, Zoroastrianism, Manichaeism and Christianity; and span topics as diverse as literature, astronomy, medicine, politics and art.

Exhibition highlights include: 

• The Diamond Sutra (868 CE), 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, the earliest known manuscript atlas of the night sky from any civilisation
• The Old Tibetan Annals, the earliest surviving historical document in Tibetan, giving a year-by-year account of the Tibetan empire between 641 and 764
• A manuscript fragment dating from the 9th century about the prophet Zoroaster or Zarathustra, nearly 400 years older than any other surviving Zoroastrian scripture.