Foreign Devils on the Silk Road: The Search for the Lost Treasures of Central Asia
 

Author: Peter Hopkirk List Price: £8.99 Paperback 272 pages (November 2001) Publisher: Oxford University Press ISBN: 0192802119

Book Description
The Silk Road was the great trans-Asian highway linking Imperial Rome with distant China. Along it travelled precious cargoes of silk, gold, ivory, plants and animals, art and knowledge. A thousand years after it fell into disuse, a Swede, Sven Hedin, stumbled onto one of its lost towns and began a race to plunder the treasures buried beneath the desert sands. Defying local legends of vengeful demons, archaeologists carried off vast quantities of wall-paintings, sculptures, silks,
and manuscripts.

Synopsis
The Silk Road, which linked imperial Rome and distant China, was once the greatest thoroughfare on earth. Along it travelled precious cargoes of silk, gold, and ivory, as well as revolutionary new ideas. Its oasis towns blossomed into thriving centres of Buddhist art and learning. In time it began to decline. The traffic slowed, the merchants left, and finally its towns vanished beneath the desert sands to be forgotten for a thousand years. But legends grew up of lost cities filled with treasurees and guarded by demons. In the early years of the 20th century, foreign explorers began to investigate these legends, and very soon an international race began for the art treasures of the Silk Road. Huge wall paintings, sculptures, and priceless manuscripts were carried away, literally by the ton, and are today scattered through the museums of a dozen countries. Peter Hopkirk tells the story of the intrepid men who, at great personal risk, led these long-range archaeological raids, incurring the undying wrath of the Chinese.