Silk Roads

Amazing exhibition at the British Museum looking in detail at the concept of the silk roads.

Think of it more as the story of trade in the 1st millennium going geographically from Japan to Ireland. It looked at trade in both directions as well as the spread of religions along the routes.

There were some breath taking  pieces such as the earliest known chess pieces, an ivory casket which pairs the Magi with Wheland the Smithy and had Romulus and Remus on one side, a lovely Cosimo and Damian and a Chinese shoe dated about 700AD.

It told the story fairly clearly but it was a complex and interwoven narrative and I think I’ll need to come again at least once to get it straight in my mind. It suffered a bit from slow readers many of which seemed to be from the countries represented and I suspect might have been translating the labels.

Closes 23 February 2025


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