The British Museum has opened its major exhibition on the history of the Silk Roads.
The show — which runs until February 2025 — explores the pivotal 500-year period where the Silk Road was at its height. The London exhibition promises that visitors will be astonished at how vast and interconnected this chapter of history really was.
In a statement ahead of opening, the museum said that the Silk Roads exhibition goes “beyond the idea of the silk road as a simple trade route between East and West” to show how “journeys of people, objects and ideas shaped cultures and histories in the period AD 500 – 1000.”
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What were the Silk Roads?
For many visitors, the most eye-opening aspect about the display is that there wasn't one singular 'silk road'. In fact the term has nothing really to do with roads at all, at least not as we know them today.
The silk roads were instead a vibrant network of trade routes that stretched from East Asia through to the Roman Empire, and were where goods, ideas and even religion flowed across vast lands.
And it really was vast. This tapestry of trade routes weaved across the landscapes of modern-day China, Mongolia, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Uzbekistan, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan, Iran, Iraq, Syria, Turkey, Egypt, and even reached the shores of Italy.
To reflect that remarkable scale, the exhibition is equally huge.
Structured into five geographical zones that take visitors on their own Silk Roads journey, the
exhibition showcases more than 300 objects including loans by 29 lenders from national and international institutions. From Indian garnets found in Suffolk to Iranian glass unearthed in
Japan, they reveal the astonishing reach of these trade networks.
Yet while its size is a selling point in terms of value for money for ticket buyers, a few newspaper critics think it's a flaw. Some Silk Roads reviews concluded that the "sprawling scale" is perhaps too ambitious.
Silk Road treasures from Uzbekistan
Many of the items in the show are on display in the UK for the very first time. These include the first-ever loans from museums in Uzbekistan to the British Museum, such as a monumental six-metre-long wall painting created in the 7th century, and 8th-century ivory figures carved for one of the world’s oldest surviving chess sets.
The six-metre wall painting is bursting with colour, and it shows a lively procession of people on camels, horses, and even an elephant. It comes from the Hall of the Ambassadors in the ancient city of Samarkand, and dates back to the AD 660s. Unearthed from excavations in the 1960s, this artwork was made by the Sogdians, known for their skill in trading. The painting gets its name because it depicts people from various regions, even as far as Korea, coming to Samarkand to trade.
The ivory chess pieces are also a major coup for the British Museum. Luk Yu-Ping, the museum's Basil Gray Curator of Chinese Paintings told the Observer newspaper that "they are among the earliest — if not the earliest — chess pieces known in the world. They were excavated from a site in Samarkand and are thought to date from the AD 700s.
"The figures represent part of an army. There are foot soldiers, horse riders, people riding chariots, an elephant rider. Ivory was a luxury commodity at the time, which indicates that this set was a high-value object."
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What makes the exhibition even more special according to the British Museum, is that it has involved curators from across the whole institution, which is rare when usually a show is the responsibility of just one specialist department.
It's Nicholas Cullinan's first exhibition as Director of the British Museum. He's praised the collaborative nature of the show, saying he was "particularly impressed by the way that it challenges existing perspectives while also involving deep collaboration — with departments across the Museum working together to bring it to its ambitious, compelling fruition."
Silk Roads exhibition tickets
Advance booking is strongly recommended for what is proving a popular exhibition. Adult tickets fro Silk Roads are £22 on weekdays and £24 on weekends. Under 16s get in free on any day when accompanied by a full-paying adult. British Museum members also get in free.
The exhibition is accompanied by a groundbreaking new publication which delves even deeper into the subject and is richly illustrated. It too has been created in collaboration between curators from the across the museum. You can purchase the hardback of Silk Roads here.*
If you're visiting the show, you might also want to check out the other major exhibition on show at the British Museum this autumn, an intriguing co-curated exhibition with artist Hew Locke.
Silk Roads is now open at the British Museum and runs until 23 February 2025.
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