British Museum’s ‘Silk Roads’ Exhibition Aims to Tell the Complex Story of the Misunderstood Trade Route

The history of silk is in many ways wrapped up in the history of humanity. Archaeologists have discovered traces of silk farming dating to 5,000 years ago, providing forensic proof to the story, in Chinese folklore and the writings of Confucius, that Empress Leizu, also known as Xi Ling-shi, developed the cultivation of this valuable commodity around 3,000 BCE. One day while sitting under a mulberry tree drinking tea, a silkworm cocoon dropped into her teacup. Its thread-like texture began to loosen up in the hot liquid and she unraveled the long, glossy thread. Marveling at the fiber’s magic-like transformation, she collected other cocoons and together weaved the threads into cloth. Empress Leizu’s fateful discovery of silk farming, or sericulture, would cause her to become deified, becoming the goddess of silk in Chinese mythology; she is still a popular figure of worship today, now called Silk Mother.

For centuries, China safeguarded the secret of silk production until the emergence, around 114 BCE, of the Silk Road, which is now the subject of a major exhibition at the British Museum (through February 23). This remarkable commodity, equal parts luxurious and exotic, became the driving force of the Silk Road trade, so coveted that there were countless espionage endeavors to gain its secrets. Nevertheless, the Chinese court maintained their monopoly of silk through harsh imperial decrees that sentenced anyone to death who exported silkworms or exposed the production process to foreigners. That didn’t stop Byzantine emperor Justinian I, aiming to restore his empire’s former glory, from acquiring silkworm eggs, via monks who smuggled them in bamboo rods.

Popular with the elite as a status symbol, silk also held monetary value and was often used in exchange for other goods such as spices, jewelry, weapons, and even enslaved people. This complex history is the focus of the British Museum show, titled “Silk Roads.” Expansive and brilliant, this ambitious exhibition takes visitors far and wide, traveling across desert plains, oceans, mountainous regions, and lush forests as it maps out the story of silk and how merchants got it to just about every corner of the world.

There’s a common misunderstanding that the Silk Road was merely an exchange between the West and East, but “Silk Roads” aims to spotlight the geographical reach of this ancient trade route and its many webs of connection as it crisscrossed Africa, Europe, and Asia.

“Over the last few decades, there’s been a lot of work on connections and where they went to, who was connected and how they were connected,” Sue Brunning, the exhibition’s co-curator, told ARTnews. “The research increased our knowledge and expanded our understanding of the Silk Roads and showed it to be much more than just a single trade route between East and West.”

And more importantly, the curators’ research highlights that the Silk Road wasn’t just about spices and camels, the latter called the “ships of the desert.” Brunning added, “We started to see these networks and other directions of trade, including North and South, and other things happening apart from trade such as the movement of people, objects, and ideas, not just commerce.”

Divided into five sections based on geographical zones, the exhibition features over 300 objects, with major loans from 29 national and international institutions, including the Uzbekistan Art and Culture Development Foundation, the Samarkand State Museum Reserve (State Museum of Cultural History of Uzbekistan), the National Museum of Scotland, and the Swedish History Museum in Stockholm. This museological exchange required an extensive set of negotiating with foreign governments such as the state institution of the National Museum of Tajikistan to bring priceless objects to London. In the works since 2019, Brunning said realizing the exhibition was “a big process that we went through step by step, but hopefully people will think that it’s been worthwhile.”

The array of materials that were exchanged across these routes is on full display. In the “Central Asia to Arabia” section is a set of ivory chess pieces, the earliest known of its kind, dating around 500 CE; they originated in India and were excavated in Uzbekistan in the 700s CE. Initially a game for aristocrats, as chess spread along the Silk Road’s routes, it became a popular pastime across the Sasanian empire, then across the Islamic world and later in Europe. Nearby, beaded heirloom necklaces from Egypt show the far reach of the Silk Roads, as they were made from materials from elsewhere, like amber from the Baltic North, etched carnelian beads from Iran, and green glass beads strung with tiny shells from Sri Lanka and South India.

Land routes weren’t the only modes of transport along the Silk Roads, the exhibition explains. One display looks at objects from a 9th-century shipwreck near Belitung Island, Indonesia, recovered in 1998. With over 60,000 items believed to have been in its hull, treasures like tiny glass bottles for cosmetics and medicines from the Middle East, bronze mirrors from Sumatra, and ceramics from China are now on view at the British Museum. 

Elsewhere, we see how religion and knowledge also traversed the Silk Roads. One of the oldest copies of the Qur’an, detailing the Hajj pilgrimage to Mecca, is presented alongside a map illustrating the importance of Muslim scholars, like Muhammad ibn Musa al-Khwarizmi and Habash al-Hasib al-Marwazi, and their contributions to geographical knowledge. This is but one of the many sets of objects that show how the Silk Road was crucial in the spread of Christianity, Islam, and Buddhism. In a display focusing on Trans-Saharan networks and West African connections are archaeological finds of copper alloy vessels and regalia from Igbo Ukwu (present-day Nigeria) show the ingenuity of this this flourishing community and its long-distance connections, with objects of Mediterranean, Arabian, Indian, and Levantine origins also uncovered.

But the history of the Silk Road wasn’t all light. The exhibition highlights the darker aspects of the Silk Roads that occurred such as slavery, wars, religious tensions, and occupation.

Manuscripts found in Dunhuang, China, illustrate the organized market for enslaved people in the region. A contract on display records the sale of a 28-year-old woman called Xiansheng; she was sold in exchange for five bolts of silk. A Buddhist monk and nun who witnessed the sale were among the several signatories to the contract. The markets were also used by diplomatic envoys who transported enslaved people as gifts to their hosts.

Elsewhere, an Arabic record detailing the sale of a Nubian woman named Shu’la highlights how enslaved people were used as commodities in this part of the world. Declaring her fit for sale, the deed describes her physical characteristics including the scars on her body. Because of Egypt’s arid desert climate, hundreds of legal documents providing information about the buyers and sellers of enslaved people have been preserved. These documents also detail information on the enslaved people, giving us context into their identity and the difficult circumstances they went through.

“This Silk Roads story comprises many journeys that span the distance from the Pacific to the Atlantic,” Elisabeth R. O’Connell, a Byzantine world specialist who also worked on the exhibition, told ARTnews.“From empires to individuals, we show the range of networks that facilitated movement, both voluntary and involuntary. It is a huge privilege for us to bring the stories of diplomats and pilgrims, scholars and students, refugees and captives, traders and traded to our visitors.”

With far-reaching trade of wares across cultures came geopolitical alliances and diplomacy, the exchange of gifts being essential to cementing and maintaining these key relationships. The Hall of Ambassadors, a rare surviving artwork from the Sogdian period and found in Afrasiab (Samarkand), present-day Uzbekistan, shows that they were once renowned traders of the Silk Road, trading across thousands of kilometers in the Mediterranean, India, China, and more. In the early 6th century, city-states of Sogdiana were conquered by Turk armies; this complex relationship eventually led to an alliance which benefitted Sogdiana’s domination in trade. Archaeological finds like the large-scale Hall of Ambassadors showcase their sophisticated court, a result of the accumulated riches in trading and their far-reaching diplomatic affairs with other nations, even if at times they were antagonistic.

And while this extensive exhibition covers various facets of all that took place along the Silk Road, Brunning notes that it is by no means comprehensive. “There are other threads, narratives and storylines that we could follow up on in the future,” she said.

The vastness of “Silk Roads” can at times feel intimidating when navigating the exhibition, but it’s reflective of just how far-reaching and extensive the Silk Road network actually was and “just how deep the history of connectivity between different parts of the world is,” Brunning said. In gathering so much together, the exhibition “enables us to reflect upon the global world that we live in today and see that we can collaborate with other cultures in very diverse places.”