Integrity Score 530
No Records Found
No Records Found
No Records Found
BY BARBARA O'BRIEN
The discovery of a long-hidden library in a cave near Dunhuang, China, was one of the great archaeological finds of all time. And if you’ve never heard of it, you aren’t alone.
The discovery of the Dunhuang cave library was “on par with Tutankhamun’s tomb and the Dead Sea Scrolls,” wrote Jacob Mikanowski in the New Yorker (Occtober 9, 2013). The library held more than 45,000 manuscripts and printed documents that had been hidden for 900 years. The texts were in seventeen different languages, many extinct for centuries. They covered topics from religion to history to mathematics to dancing.
Dunhuang was an isolated backwater on the edge of the Gobi Desert. How did the library get there? And who hid it?
About Dunhuang
In the long-ago days of the Silk Road, Dunhuang was bustling with merchants and pilgrims. It was built in an oasis where the Gobi Desert and the far eastern edge of the Taklamakan Desert meet in today’s Gansu Province, China. And it sat on the crossroads of two major routes of the Silk Road network. Merchants traveling between China and the Roman Empire would stop there.
Beginning in the 1st century CE, Buddhist monks from central Asia began to follow the Silk Road merchants into China. This was the primary way Buddhism was introduced to China. In time Dunhuang became a center of Buddhist learning and home to many temples.
About the Dunhuang Caves
And this takes us to the Dunhuang caves. They are formally named the Mogao Caves, and they were carved into cliffs southeast of the Dunhuang oasis over a period of many centuries, beginning in 366 CE. UNESCO says the Mogao Caves “comprise the largest, most richly endowed, and longest used treasure house of Buddhist art in the world.” From the 4th to the 14th centuries the caves were expanded and filled with art. Currently preserved there are 45,ooo square meters of murals and more than 2,000 painted sculptures.