Desert Treasures Two-thousand-year-old cookies and boat-shaped coffins: Catherine Hickley reports from Bloomberg News in Berlin on startling new finds in western China

ORIGINS OF THE SILK ROAD: SENSATIONAL NEW FINDS FROM XINJIANG, CHINA 13 October 2007 – 14 January 2008 Martin-Gropius-Bau, Berlin www.gropiusbau.de 9 February – 1 June 2008

Reiss-Engelhorn-Museen, Mannheim www.rem.mannheim.de

ICY WINTERS, SCORCHING SUMMERS AND fierce sandstorms made life difficult for the people of the Taklamakan Desert long before traders began plying the Silk Road. The east-west trading route wound its way around the fringes of the parched Tarim Basin, now in the northwestern Chinese province of Xinjiang. It linked oases fed by melted glaciers from the mountains to the north and south, eventually connecting the Far East to the shores of the Mediterranean. That climate, so harsh on the region’s people, proved perfect for preserving the contents of their tombs. Textiles, musical instruments and even food dating from as long ago as 4,000 years have been uncovered in recent excavations. The best examples are currently on display outside China for the first time. This exhibition includes the usual Bronze Age ceramics and tools. More startling, though, are woolly tasselled belts, jaunty felt caps and a cosy goatskin coat from as late as 2200 BC. There is an intimacy about the clothing that brings our ancient forebears much closer than their tools or pots. A blue-and-red silk caftan bears 2,000-year-old sweat stains; a richly patterned skirt shows evidence of careful mending. Moccasin-like sheepskin boots and bright woolly blankets summon the chill wind sweeping off the steppe. A pair of eighth-century BCtrousers are equipped with an extra seat panel to make horseback riding more comfortable. A konghouharp is on display that has survived for 2,500years and is the oldest found in China. Elsewhere are wooden figures (see right), probably buried in lieu of those who died far from home and dressed to resemble them. The food remnants are even more amazing. A packet of millet cookies looks as though it has seen better days, although it is hard to

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Wooden figure with death mask and burial clothing, Xinjiang, China (circa 200 AD)

PHOTOGRAPH © CULTURAL HERITAGE BUREAU OF XINJIANG UIGHUR AUTONOMOUS REGION, C HINA

believe it is more than 2,000 years past the sell-by date. An eighth-century BClamb rib on a skewer still contains thin strands of dried meat. There are small bowls of millet seeds and noodles and cubes of meat. One of the most touching exhibits is the mummy of a baby girl who probably died about 800 BC. The colours of her felt burial clothing are as bright as they must have been three millennia ago: her cap is deep blue, her double-layered blanket is wine-red, wrapped around with twists of blue and red wool. Next to her, archaeologists found a cow’s horn and a pouch for food and drink. Photographs of Xinjiang show empty expanses of sand, so the boat-shaped coffins in the exhibition come as a surprise. Though the climate has not changed much since humans first inhabited it, the region was in fact much wetter and boats were once widely used. Water from the glaciers nourished tamarisk trees, poplars, reeds and olive trees. Tigers, deer and wild boar roamed free. The people of the region were ethnically mixed, and their lifestyles also varied. Some were nomads, others farmers. From the second century BC, merchants and businessmen played a larger role in the oasis towns. That is the time when the Silk Road came into being, a network of routes used to transport much more than silk (which the people of the West believed grew on the leaves of trees in China). Excavations have proved that camels brought gold from the nomadic cultures of the north and bronze from China. Some of the finds show how the Tarim Basin was a melting pot of cultures long before the Silk Road’s heyday. A gold death mask, probably from the fifth or sixth century BC, has Asian features and incorporates European stone-setting techniques – a sign that technologies, cultures and ideas were exchanged alongside goods, further proving that globalisation is nothing new.

Catherine Hickleyis the Arts Correspondent for Bloomberg News in Berlin.
Exhibitions

PHOTOGRAPH © AGA KHAN MUSEUM COLLECTION

MASTERPIECES OF ISLAMIC ART FROM THE AGA KHAN MUSEUM| 5 October 2007 – 7 January 2008, Richelieu Wing, Muséée du Louvre, Paris. www.louvre.fr. February – April 2008, Museu Calouste Gulbenkian, Lisbon. www.museu.gulbenkian.pt As a preview to the opening of the Aga Khan Museum in Toronto in 2011 (set to become a centre of education dedicated to Islamic arts and culture in all their historic, cultural and geographic diversity), highlights from the Aga Khan’s remarkable collection of Islamic art are travelling the world. Following the ‘Spirit and Life’ exhibition held in London in summer 2007, parts of the collection have moved to the Muséée du Louvre in Paris. The exhibition includes an exquisite display of artworks and decorative objects that attest to the beauty and breadth of Islamic art from Spain to India. Over 1,000 years of history are represented, from the eighth to the nineteenth centuries, including a number of items from Central Asia such as epigraphic ware (see the tenth-century dish, left, from the Eastern Iranian world), tile panels, textiles, musical instruments and a folio from a monumental Qur’an from Samarkand, which is believed to have rested on the giant Qur’an stand found today in front of the Bibi Khanum mosque.

PHOTOGRAPH © STATE MUSEUM OF ORIENTAL ART, M OSCOW

UNDER THE SIGN OF THE GOLDEN GRIFFON: THE ROYAL TOMBS OF THE SCYTHIANS | 26 October 2007 – 20 January 2008, Kunsthalle der Hypo-Kulturstiftung, Munich www.hypo-kunsthalle.de. 15 February – 25 May 2008, Museum füür Kunst und Gewerbe Hamburg. www.mkg-hamburg.de This inspiring exhibition is devoted to the geographically broad history and culture of the nomadic Scythians (700 BC– 100 BCat their height), whose origins have been traced along the River Yenisei in Siberia, across the Central Asian steppe and all the way to their grazing grounds on the edges of the Black Sea. The exhibition concentrates on archaeological finds from the graves of Scythian kings and nobles buried with great pomp in kurgans(burial mounds) spanning the Eurasian steppe. These include decorative and everyday objects in gold, silver and leather (see the fourth-century BC drinking horn in the form of Pegasus, right, from kurgan4 at Uljap, Kuban region), plus textiles, weapons and horse equipment, as well as a mummy preserved by the permafrost of the Altai Mountains that reveals tattoos. The exhibition also presents the most recent results of modern excavation techniques, plus new physical and anthropological research. Visitors learn not only about the tombs’ fascinating architecture and treasures, but also obtain a well-rounded perspective of the Scythians by further understanding the environmental conditions in which they lived on the steppe.

RUMI & THE SUFI TRADITION| 23 October 2007 – 3 February 2008, The Great Hall Balcony, Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York. www.metmuseum.org One of Islamic civilisation’s greatest poets, philosophers and scholars, Mevlana Jalal al-Din Rumi (1207–73) was born in Balkh (present-day northern Afghanistan), then the thriving capital of the Khorezmshah dynasty and a centre for Islamic art and culture. To avoid the Mongol invasions, Rumi’s family left Balkh and moved westward until reaching Konya (present-day Turkey), where they settled and where Rumi lived until his death. Rumi’s mystical writings are generally considered the supreme expression of Sufism (the mystical trend in Islamic thought and culture). He advocated universal religious tolerance, positive reasoning, goodness and awareness through love, and founded the Mevlevi Dervish Order of which he was the spiritual master. Rumi instituted the ecstatic dance ritual for which the ‘whirling dervishes’ are known today. ‘Rumi & the Sufi Tradition’ coincides with the 800th anniversary of the poet-philosopher’s birth, which has been marked with celebrations worldwide (UNESCO has also designated 2007 as the ‘International Year of Rumi’). The Metropolitan Museum of Art’s exhibition consists of nearly three dozen works, created between the thirteenth and the nineteenth centuries, from the museum’s Islamic Art collection. The miniature paintings (including the early seventeenthcentury Indian ‘Portait of a Sufi’, above), calligraphy, ceramics, metalwork, glass and textiles on display evoke the world in which Rumi lived, and suggest the scope of an enduring legacy that remains universally relevant today.

PHOTOGRAPH © THE METROPOLITAN MUSEUM OF ART, B EQUEST OF

CORA TIMKEN BURNETT,1956(57.51.30)

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