Silk Roads – British Museum Exhibition

Exhibition / 26 September 2024 – 23 February 2025

An attempt to overcome the simplistic, exoticised and orientalised view of the Silk Roads, which created a first globalised economy and world, the Silk Roads exhibition at the British Museum is an exciting, revisionary and thought-provoking array of objects and materials.

The story of the exhibition is told elegantly and clearly: that this is not just the story of one single road, but of many. That this is not just the story of silk. This is the epic story and journey of connections, countless. How the Silk roads influenced histories and cultures across the world as ideas spread and economic trade transformed into a cultural exchange of ideas. One beautiful example is the spread of Buddhism from India across the Silk Roads, the belief system that still shapes much of the world today. Another I hadn’t heard of was the Sogdian whirl which came to China, an example of how ideas and bodies were changed and charged through the interaction with diversity and difference.

The networks explored through the objects create an astonishing encompassing of craft, materials and locations, from Tang Chinese ceramics exports intended for ports in the Middle East to garnets from India found in Suffolk. And so, our mental networks of assumed histories are updated, surprised and stimulated.

Intriguing stories of the personalities of the Silk Roads are showcased in the exhibition. There is the English smuggler, Willibald and a Chinese princess of Legend who unfolded the secrets of producing silk to her new kingdom. There are many such enticing morsels throughout. The reality of silk as currency, and the tales of fabulous places, such as Tang China with its capital Chang’an. This was for a time the largest of the cities in the world, boasting a population of one million people.

The exhibition has diversity. For instance, it describes the foreign populations that mingled in Tang China’s cosmopolitan cities who are displayed as figurines from the time.

Treasures abound. Absolutely and astonishingly sublime, spectacular, sensational. Indian art, a whalebone casket. There was an amazing dagger and sheath decorated with gold, garnets and glass alongside a gold shoulder clasp with garnets and glass. So supremely beautiful and perfect. A wonderful decorated gold bowl from Romania featuring a griffin mauling a goat, deadly and dazzling. There are treasures from the Dunhuang ‘Library Cave’ which contained some 70,000 manuscripts, paintings, textiles and other objects.

Mysteries abound too, the temptation to delve and discover, to explore. The unknown meaning of the ‘comma-shaped’ jade ornament in the Korean peninsula and the Japanese archipelago. Shipwrecks with cargoes of brilliant treasures, the mental journey as you imagine the crew’s connections and intentions, as you travel in thought with them through history.

Some favourites in the exhibition for me were the display showing how Sanskrit was read in Chinese, as my family comes from India and my middle name is in Sanskrit, and the display on how geometric designs were diffused throughout Islam. I also particularly enjoyed looking at the treasures salvaged from the shipwrecks. The gift of the sea and of discovery.

The exhibition has contemporary reference as it tells us as we exit, that the connections forged on the Silk Roads will continue to shape the present and the future.

Fabulous as a journey through space and time, the exhibition really enlivens history. And it serves as a useful corrective to the modern day assumption that in the old times the people were unenlightened, unadventurous, prejudiced and isolated. There is a pluralistic and nuanced feeling to the presentation, to its revisionist spirit and to its celebration of human diversity and cultural exchange. A beautiful story that is told with beautiful things and beautiful people. Amazing.