As you enter the British Museum's Autumn show you are confronted with a huge photograph of a giant shipping container crossing a wide open ocean. The image is split into panels that turn to show a caravan of camels in silhouette moving across the desert. New modes of transport, old routes.
Silk Roads, note the plural, is not just about one road but a multitude of trading routes that made the ancient world a much more interconnected place than one might have imagined. Spices and silks, jewels and ceramics were traded; religions, philosophies, culture and fashion moved with them.
The first object you see is a tiny green Buddha which found its way from what is now Pakistan to an island off Sweden over a thousand years ago. Giant screens with videos of the landscapes provide a backdrop and the key cities, Dunhuang, Samarkand, Baghdad, Constantinople... are signposted in black and white like staging posts.
There is an embarrassment of riches on display. Some of the objects will engage children: there are elephants and camels and horses aplenty; spot the world's oldest chess set and an ivory container that may have been made from the tusks of Charlemagne's elephant. Look out for the extraordinary haul from a shipwreck off Indonesia and lift the flaps to smell musk, incense and balsam.
It is not an exhibition that is geared towards families in the way that Legion, Life in the Roman Army earlier this year was. That said, kids from 11+, especially those with an interest in geography, history or philosophy, will be fascinated. As will their parents!
Silk Roads British Museum, 26 September–23 February. Tickets: from £22 adults, U16s free.
Emily Turner 27 September 2024
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