Lost Treasures of the Silk Road In April 1906 the British-Hungarian explorer Aurel Stein left Kashmir with a small caravan, heading west through the melting spring snows of the Hindu Kush, then north down into the Taklamakan. This, Stein's second foray into the region, would earn him great fame as well as considerable enmity; and, along with the expeditions of several hardy contemporaries, it would opena controversial new chapter in the history of the Silk Road and the Mogao caves. Caravans of Aurel Stein crossing the sana dunes in the fierce Taklamakan on the route fo Dunhuang innago7: Teper tie Brisk bar, So pe 9036388)Part of the cliff face at Mogao as it appeared By pein of Th itch Manchu Qing Dynasty (644-190) Ca.ms Chinese Qngrulets 723-25 Local ols ake erat In Mogae eaves, Ourngbuleing of resend ay of Dunhuang. sie Insrpion al Lilly snd me al Dunhuang region Dunhuang sn Mote once span par By the late nineteenth century, the once-thriving oasis of Dunhuang had become a remote, dusty town of few inhab- itants in the wastelands of central Asia ‘The Mogao grottoes, although continuing to serve as a local religious center, particu- larly during the annual festivals in May and June, were largely abandoned. Wind: blown sands drifted into the caves, and the ‘wooden temple facades built on the cliffs had fallen into decay. And yet, in a way, Dunhuang and Mogao were once again fortunate; other Silk Road sites had been swallowed whole by the drifting dunes of the Taklamakan. The town of Niya, on the great desert’s southwestern border, had perished this way in the third century. Loulan, a military garrison without reli- gious associations or art, forgotten or abandoned by the Chinese capital, followed in the fourth, As many as several hundred others vanished in due courses traces of such towns had emerged like will-o-the wisps on infrequent occasion, only to dis- appear beneath the desert once again Rately were the sands disturbed. Locals sometimes robbed a tomb; British and Russian explorers turned up the odd coin, bits of pottery, and even a few manu- scripts. The British surveyor William Johnson briefly visited a buried city near Khotan in the mid-1860s—apparently the first European to do so. Russia’s greatest explorer of central Asia, Col. Nikolay Prehevalsky, came across ruins in the Lopnor Desert a decade later. Przhevalsky briefly passed through Dunhuang in 1879, as did a Hungarian geological expedition. masPresen-daycly Before 820 fanous Historical. tDaniuangesiab —_peoprapher Ku Song iss Magee shed eastofrumned caves rcords tele scrplons testis ay Sohich eve detele ot oundng snd atory atteNeither party lingered, and although both of them noted the grottoes at Mogao, and the Hungarians, at least, took note of the wall paintings, apparently neither seriously explored the caves and the art within. As the nineteenth century ended, how: ever, word percolated back into Europe of ancient civilizations buried under the vast deserts of the region then known as Chinese Turkestan. In the decades that followed, a handful of adventurers, explorers, and archae- 's from the West would trickle into the ologi region along the ancient trade routes, head- ing north from India or east from Europe or west from China; soon a race developed to claim the long-lost treasures of central Asia. \es-34'Whie posed Durhueng chtese oti XuNaiguertes poem “An Ode rote Thousand Busdna Caves” 1879 Hargaianemped= fonviste Dunhuang snd Moges caver Over the centuries, windblown sand piled up against the Mogao cliff face, and sec- The first great excavator of the now abandoned Silk Road was the Swedish ‘geographer Sven Hedin, who was one of the most celebrated heroes of the West. Hedin almost died on his first expedition through the Teklamakan, but that did not prevent him from returning again and again, unearthing Borasan, Karadong, and an oasis so mysterious that he could only tions as here in the northern part of the site, have collapsed in hquakes call it Taklamakan, although it was later identified as Dandan-uilik (Place of Houses with Ivory) Several German expeditions, in which the kaiser himself took personal interest, soon followed. The second one was headed by Albert Von Le Coq and Albert Griinwedel, 900-1905 Are Stn'strst expedition