Secrets of the Silk Road

The discovery of a cave full of manuscripts on the edge of the Gobi Desert reveals the details of everyday life on the Silk Road.

frontispiece to the earliest complete  block printed ‘book’,  the Chinese translation  of the Buddhist text the Diamond Sutra, AD 868, found in the Dunhuang caves in 1907
Frontispiece to the earliest complete block printed ‘book’, the Chinese translation of the Buddhist text the Diamond Sutra, AD 868, found in the Dunhuang caves in 1907. British Library/Bridgeman Images.

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