THIS surprising, stupendous, and engaging exhibition spreads from the East to the West, charting physical journeys from Japan and the islands of the China Sea to the heartlands of Europe and the territories of Scandinavia. It is only a pity that even the most sumptuous exhibits cannot redeem the grime of the Sainsbury Gallery at the British Museum, more aircraft hangar than international exhibition space.

It is timely for a generation that knows that it is not only the devil who wears Prada (or Primark), but has few qualms that the fabrics of our own society derive from the sweatshops of Turkey and of Indonesia, from the slave farms of China, and the interned migrant peoples of so many countries along the old Silk Roads.

We learn that this is nothing new; but it is to the credit of the curators at the BM that, unlike some other public institutions, it does not rub our faces in modern-day wokery around slavery.

The vast numbers of silver dirhams from the ninth century onwards found across Scandinavia and further West attest to the demand for labour within Islamic lands. Islam had banned the enslavement of its own believers, and of those living in their territories, and sought a Christian workforce elsewhere; the Irish nobleman Findan (d.878) from Leinster was captured twice by Viking raiders before escaping to become a hermit based at Rheinau. Dirhams sparkle next to metal neck braces. At Fustat in Egypt, Jewish merchants traded Nubian slaves: the bill of sale from November 1108 for a Coptic woman, Na‘im, sold by the widow of one Jewish slave-owner to another Jewish woman, is written in Aramaic.

The exhibition opens with a bronze Buddha figure from the late 500s, which was probably made in the Swat valley (Pakistan), but was found in Uppland, Sweden. It is so small, sitting no more than 8.4cm high, that it is easy to overlook and not easy to view amid the crowds in the arrivals hall beneath the flickering neon announcement wall, displaying places and dates like so many airline destinations.

For those using Google Translate to photograph the caption, the small miracle in front of them and the wonder and serenity on the face of the Buddha are seemingly lost after its journey of 5000km on the Silk Road.

© trustees of the british museumA ceramic figure of a camel

The display concludes with two remarkable finds from the heart of Mercia (Staffordshire) which suggest links between the kingdom of Offa and the more distant Byzantine and Muslim world. The Lichfield Angel (AD c.800), vested in sweeping robes and with the hieratic gesture of a Byzantine priest’s blessing, is shown alongside a gold coin, minted for King Offa (d.796) that was found in Rome. It amends the design of a dinar of the ‘Abbasid caliph al-Mansur (reigned 754-75), adding “OFFA REX” to the reverse.

The exhibition posits such trajectories and journeys across cultures, languages, and dynasties. A school’s entire RE curriculum is here.

The famed mosaic decoration of San Vitale in Ravenna reminds us of the splendour of the Byzantine court of the Empress Theodora (d.548), her attendant ladies swathed in luxurious imports. Byzantium was reliant on the silk routes until the sixth century, when Syrian monks smuggled silk-moth eggs in from the East to encourage local sericulture.

A fragment of a decorated sleeve cuff (c.600-900) depicts two silvery horsemen riding towards one another, one of them named Zacharias, on a rich imperial red silk. Armed foot soldiers attack from below. The BM purchased this from the disgraced adulterous artist (best known for his 1856 painting The Death of Chatterton) Henry Wallis in 1904.

It is a pity that the curators have not reunited it with the identical panel from the other sleeve, also found at Akhim in Egypt, which the Revd Greville John Chester (1830-92) donated to the V&A (V&A 303.1887). He was a pioneering Egyptologist who collaborated with Sir Flinders Petrie. In 1881, he reported visiting Egypt 31 times: not bad for a vicar who had taken early retirement from his Sheffield parish in 1865 on the grounds of ill health.

© trustees of the british museum“The Franks Casket”, with imagery drawing on on Christian traditions, Northern European mythology, and Jewish and Roman history

The first silk panel that we see is also the largest, hanging behind the 31cm-high gilt-bronze reliquary casket from the East Pagoda at Gameunsa Temple in the state of the Unified Silla (South Korea). That had been fashioned around AD 682 to house some of the cremated remains of the Buddha. On each of its four sides stand the Four Heavenly Kings, cast in deep bas-relief.

The eighth-century embroidered panel, measuring 241×159cm, comes from the Mogao Caves (Dunhuang or Tunhwang, China) and depicts the miraculous image of Liangzhu. The Buddha, in a rich red robe, stands beneath a blue canopy of state between his disciples, the bodhisattvas Kashyapa and Ananda.

Next to it from the same cave and also from the Stein Collection in the BM is a fragment of an ink-and-pigment drawing on silk of a haloed bodhisattva-like figure, his right hand held as if in blessing, which has recently been identified as a possible image of Christ. It is suggested that this is Jesus as the cloaked guide who leads to the afterlife within the context of the Mesopotamian religion of Manichaeism.

Drawn by his interest in finding evidence of the meeting of cultures in early texts, the Hungarian scholar Sir Aurel Stein, who died at Kabul in 1943, travelled extensively in north-west China coming first to the Dunhuang cave complex in 1907, where a Taoist Abbot Wang Yuanlu (1849-1931) was the caretaker of the site with its extensive library.

© ACDF of Uzbekistan, Samarkand State Museum Reserve. Photo By Andrey ArakelyanWall-painting from the south wall of the “Hall of the Ambassadors”

Several detached wall-paintings surround our visit, including one excavated south of Lykopolis (modern-day Asyut, in Egypt), in which an inserted panel shows the Three Young Men with Daniel, dressed in earlier Parthian Persian outfits, between Sts Cosmas and Damian, with their three brothers, all in contemporary Byzantine dress (c.500-700).

Impressive, not just for its size, but for its detail, is the south wall of the “Hall of Ambassadors” from Samarkand. A ritual procession of richly accoutred elephants and camels carries the governor Varkhuman, his principal wife, and his entourage of Zoroastrian priests to the shrine of his ancestors (c.660). Locally, the Sasanian kingdom had collapsed (651), and the Tang dynasty had annexed the territory, installing Varkhuman to protect Chinese interests in Central Asia. Plus ça change.


“Silk Roads” is at the British Museum, Great Russell Street, London WC2, until 23 February. Phone 020 7323 8000. www.britishmuseum.org