Far from home: travelling the Silk Roads
Discover more stories from the Silk Roads in our major new exhibition (until 23 February 2025)
From an African king to a Chinese princess, meet the fascinating figures whose stories are forever entwined with the Silk Roads.
For millennia, people travelling the Silk Roads carried objects, ideas and technologies to new realms. We know little about many of these individuals, but some have left a lasting mark on the historical record. Their tales highlight the links between communities across Asia, Africa and Europe, from China to Britain, and from Scandinavia to Madagascar. We asked the curators of the British Museum's latest exhibition, Silk Roads, to tell the stories of people – and animals – who travelled this vast network. Hear how a princess from Dunhuang assured diplomatic ties with Khotan in the first millennium AD, meet a Middle-Eastern elephant-envoy and learn about the canny strategies of an African king in the AD 500s.
The silk princess on the Silk Roads
Luk Yu-ping
During the AD 600s and 700s, in the Buddhist kingdom of Khotan (now in present-day northwest China), a legend spread about a princess from an 'eastern kingdom' who brought sericulture (silk farming) to the region, the secrets of which had been kept in China for thousands of years. The princess hid mulberry tree seeds and silkworm eggs in her headdress when she married the king of Khotan so that she could have silk robes to wear in her new home. A monastery was built on the site where the first silkworms were bred, and the princess prohibited the killing of silkworms.
This story, recorded by the Buddhist monk Xuanzang (AD 602–664) who visited Khotan, is depicted on a painted wooden panel discovered in the remains of a Buddhist temple in Dandan Uiliq in the Khotan oasis.
The princess is shown wearing an elaborate headdress surrounded by a halo, suggesting her holy status. A basket of cocoons and a woman weaving at a loom nearby highlight the success of her rebellious act.
So who was this princess from an eastern kingdom? Could this legend really have happened? There is no historical record of a princess from imperial China marrying the king of Khotan. Perhaps she came from another kingdom neighbouring Khotan. While the identity of this princess remains a mystery, many women travelled and married as part of political alliances between states during the period AD 500–1000, playing a role in ensuring smooth relations along the Silk Roads. One example is Lady Cao (active AD 930s – 950s), the daughter of Cao Yijin (r. AD 914–935), a local ruler of Dunhuang, who in AD 934 married the king of Khotan, Li Shengtian (in Khotanese Viśa' Saṃbhava, r. AD 912–966). This marriage was an important political alliance between Dunhuang and Khotan, and her image in full regalia appears in two Buddhist rock-cut temples at the Mogao Caves, Dunhuang. Her long title identifies her as the queen of Khotan.
Although little is known about Lady Cao, fragments of writings preserved in Cave 17 (the 'Library Cave' sealed 1,000 years ago and filled with more than 70,000 manuscripts, paintings and other objects) at Dunhuang suggest that she kept in touch with her parents, who from time-to-time sent her things such as fine silk textiles. A text dating to AD 956 records diplomatic gifts sent from Dunhuang to Khotan, including female zither (a type of stringed instrument) players and other court musicians for the queen.
A rare and tantalising survival is an envelope with the writing and seal of the 'Heavenly Queen of Khotan', which is likely to have been from Lady Cao to her family in Dunhuang. Sadly, the letter itself has not been found, but the seal and text on the envelope suggest that she was educated and literate and that communication went in both directions.
Lady Cao's story is part of a longer history of elite women who travelled as part of political marriages. The relationships that they helped to foster – and the movement of attendants, ideas and goods that followed their marriages – were an important part of the diplomatic exchanges that took place along the Silk Roads.
The trader and the king: Cosmas and King Kaleb
Elisabeth R. O'Connell
Around AD 524 an anonymous Alexandrian merchant, later known as Cosmas Indicopleustes (meaning 'who sailed to India' in Greek), travelled to the bustling port city of Adulis, on the Red Sea coast of Africa. As it is today, the Red Sea was a strategic waterway on the Silk Roads, connecting the Indian Ocean and Mediterranean, and providing a critical link between Africa and Arabia. In the AD 500s the kingdom of Aksum, centred in the highlands of present-day Ethiopia, controlled access to the Red Sea from Adulis, in what is now Eritrea.
By the mid-AD 200s Aksum was already considered one of the world's most powerful realms alongside Persia, Rome and Sileos, which modern scholars think is probably China. The cosmopolitan outlook of Aksum's kings is clear from their use of Greek alongside their own language, Ge‘ez, in inscriptions and on coins. In the mid-AD 300s they also adopted Christianity, making Aksum one of the earliest officially Christian states.
Travelling from Byzantine Egypt, Cosmas was in Adulis to buy elephant ivory. While there the local governor invited him to copy Greek monumental inscriptions for the king of Aksum, Kaleb (r. about AD 510–540), who was preparing to invade the Jewish kingdom of Himyar, just across the Red Sea in present-day Yemen. The original inscriptions that Cosmas copied are lost but, from his record, modern scholars have distinguished two extraordinary texts, which were carved about 500 years apart. They are depicted in a remarkable drawing preserved in all three surviving manuscript copies of Cosmas' work.
The earlier inscription, carved on a tall black stone stela with a triangular top (left), commemorates elephant-hunting expeditions by the Macedonian king of Egypt, Ptolemy III (r. 246–221 BC), and his conquests using 'war elephants' all the way to Central Asia. The later inscription was carved on a white marble votive throne (right) around AD 200 and celebrates the successes of a previous Aksumite king at the height of the empire's expansion, when its territories stretched from the northern Horn of Africa across the Red Sea to southwest Arabia.
When Kaleb launched his military campaign against Himyar in AD 525, it was nominally to redress the persecution of fellow Christians. However, his claim to rule southwest Arabia was also conveniently validated by the inscriptions copied by Cosmas. The story of the trader and the king, brought together by cross-cultural connections in a busy international hub, demonstrates the range of activities made possible by the Silk Roads, as well as their geographical breadth, both in the AD 500s and in the centuries before.
Abu al-Abbas, Charlemagne's celebrity elephant
Sue Brunning
In the years around AD 800, two powerful rulers from different parts of the world engaged in an act of diplomacy. On one side was Charlemagne, soon to be the emperor of much of Western Europe, with his capital at Aachen in present-day Germany. On the other was Harun al-Rashid, ruler of the vast Abbasid caliphate, from his own capital, Baghdad, in present-day Iraq.
Their envoys faced arduous journeys between the realms: some 3,600km point-to-point, but in reality far longer as they traced winding routes by river, land and sea – routes that, collectively, made up the overlapping networks of the Silk Roads.
Contemporary Frankish texts record the names of Charlemagne's envoys as Lantfrid, Sigimund, and a Jewish man named Isaac. The first two learned, to their cost, the magnitude of the undertaking, as both perished before completing the round trip. Isaac made it back to Europe, bringing with him Harun's envoys from Baghdad. While we don't know the Abbasid envoys' names, we do have a record of another individual who survived the long journey westward: Abu al-Abbas, who also happened to be an elephant.
Abu was the most remarkable of Harun's many diplomatic gifts to Charlemagne. His species, whether African or Asian, is unknown, but he apparently captured imaginations in his new home in Francia. Possibly, he inspired an illuminator at St Denis Abbey, near Paris, to embellish a manuscript with a lifelike head of an elephant. Its small, floppy ears, resembling those of Asian elephants, may be a clue to Abu's origin.
A part of Abu himself may have survived too. The exhibition displays a vanishingly rare Carolingian example of a vessel known as a pyxis, used as containers for small items. They were made by cutting a section through an elephant's tusk, to create the distinctive cylindrical shape.
Fresh ivory was hard to come by in Charlemagne's realm, where artisans often recycled late Roman and Byzantine carved plaques by planing down their decoration to make new pieces. The pyxis, however, required an unused tusk. Its carvings suggest that it was made in Aachen, Charlemagne's capital, during the early AD 800s. Texts record Abu's death in AD 810 at Lippenham, only 100km or so to the north. These tantalising links make it tempting to speculate on whether one of Abu's tusks could have provided the material for the pyxis. While this is difficult to prove, Abu's poignant story reminds us that animals, as well as humans, played their part in connecting cultures across the Silk Roads' sprawling networks.
Conclusion
Meet more figures whose lives are entwined with the Silk Roads at our major new exhibition, opening 26 September. You can also hear more about the story of the silk princess in the exhibition's audio tour.
Supported by
The Huo Family Foundation
Additional supporters
James Bartos
The Ruddock Foundation for the Arts
Uzbekistan Art and Culture Development Foundation
