> [Question de]. Peter Hopkirk, L'Occultisme, textes et recherches. In: Question de n°44, octobre-novembre 1981 – Nostradamus ? Un poète..., Sur les pas du Bouddha, Le livre des morts Tibétains. p. 107 (Lectures)
— « La Route de la Soie » ; ces mots fabuleux évoquent, comme en rêve, le lent déplacement des caravanes dans les déserts de l'Asie Centrale, ces caravanes qui allaient d'oasis-île en oasis-île. Les choses ont bien changé dans les dernières décennies. La poésie s'est brusquement terminée un jour de l'été 1979, lorsque le premier car de touristes britanniques s'arrêta devant les grottes des Mille-Bouddhas de Touen-Houeng.
Deux millénaires auparavant, dans la Rome Impériale, les dames de la bonne société s’arrachaient les luxueux vêtements de soie importés depuis la Chine via une longue chaîne d'étapes que les sables finirent par engloutir au fil des siècles. Ce n'est qu'à la fin du XIXe siècle que des archéologues occidentaux redécouvrirent les oasis îles du Turkestan chinois : le Suédois Sven Hendin, l'Anglais Sir Aurel Stein. l'Allemand Albert Von Le Coq et le Français Paul Pelliot. Mais s’agit-il vraiment d'archéologues ? Ne faut-il pas parler plutôt d'aventuriers, voire de voleurs » ?
Grand reporter au Times, et spécialiste des questions du Moyen-Orient et d'Asie, Peter Hopkirk raconte, dans un livre passionnant que l’on ne peut refermer avant d'en avoir terminé la lecture, les circonstances souvent extraordinaires des découvertes. Il décrit le butin emporté et ce qu'il en advint. Ce qu’on apprend est stupéfiant : la part du hasard, qui fut souvent à l’origine des découvertes les plus extraordinaires, l’ignorance de savants occidentaux se laissant duper par un astucieux indigène fabriquant de faux manuscrits vendus très cher, le pillage d’un fabuleux patrimoine historique et artistique, que finit par revendiquer la Chine.
Les découvreurs de ces oasis-îles disparues sous les sables dans l’infernal désert du Takla Makan ont-ils ou non préservé ce qu'ils arrachèrent à la Chine ? Des fresques enlevées aux parois de grottes furent effectivement détruites lors du bombardement allié de l’ancien musée ethnologique de Berlin. Mais nombre des temples où avaient été prélevées ces fresques en 1913 furent totalement détruits trois ans plus tard par un tremblement de terre. Alors ? comment juger ? Les hardis aventurieurs occidentaux qui firent connaître au monde entier et aussi à la Chine l’histoire ancienne des cités perdues de la Route de la Soie méritent-ils d’être traités de voleurs ? Chinois et Occidentaux s'affrontent sur la question. Aujourd'hui, l'Asie Centrale reste fermée aux étrangers, puisque cette région est devenue le champ de tir atomique de la Chine Populaire. Si la détente se poursuit, et si les relations entre la Chine et l'Union Soviétique ne se dégradent pas trop, qui le désire pourra peut-être bientôt suivre les traces des « rôdeurs » que furent Stein, Hedin, Von Le Coq et Pelliot, afin de voir par lui-même ces îles perdues qu'avaient été les oasis de la Route de la Soie. — L. Gérardin
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Ed. Arthaud

Another swashbuckling tale by Peter Hopkirk, this time covering the Europeans (and Japanese) who visited/looted sites of international significance. While not his best work, Hopkirk is still able to draw the reader into the world of archeology in the late nineteenth and early twentieth century, involving visits to far off lands, searching for lost cities while fighting off marauding gangs of bandits. It almost sounds like an Indiana Jones plot line, except for the femme fatales.

It makes me wish I'd studied archeology. ( )

Excellent resource for the silk road. Hopkirk is an excellent writer bringing in a myriad of sources to complete this really, really interesting history. ( )

This is a fascinating book. Hopkirk tells the story of European explorers and archaeologists in the Taklamakan Desert, a veritable sea of sand in Chinese Turkestan, at the intersection of China, India, Russia and Afghanistan. Two branches of the Old Silk Road, which once connected Xian, China to Rome, skirt the northern and southern edges of the Taklamakan through a series of oases and garrison towns known to Alexander the Great and first described for outsiders by Marco Polo. What adventurers found under the waves of Taklamakan sand in the first decade of the 20th c. was a lost civilization, with a distinctive Graeco-Buddhist aesthetic: statuary of exquisite inspiration and craftsmanship, colorful frescoes combining Persian, Indian and Chinese elements, and troves of sacred texts, some in unknown languages. The most valuable discovery was the bundles of manuscripts from the secret chamber at Tun-huang, in the Caves of a Thousand Buddhas (which was only one of a number of cave-temples in the region).

Removal of the artworks and manuscripts from the Taklamakan was controversial, with the Europeans defending their excavations as necessary for the preservation of previously unknown artifacts, and the Chinese charging outsiders with the theft of their cultural patrimony. One ironic consequence of the removal of artifacts abroad was the destruction of some of the most impressive frescoes during the bombing of Berlin during WWII. ( )

A short but entertaining book about the exploration of lost cities that made up the Silk Road and the race for archaeological treasures from those cities.

The Silk Road flourished for centuries as an overland path from China West to European markets. All along the Silk Road cities and civilizations came into being to service the traders with many of the cities becoming trading powers in their own rights. At the same time, the cities that developed created a unique mix of art and culture as Buddhist traditions and art were merged with Western ideals. This culture flourished for centuries until the diminishing importance of the silk trade and environmental changes led to the abandonment of the cities. The cities sat, barely remembered for hundreds of years, remembered vaguely by locals and in writings by the likes of Marco Polo. In the late 19th century, England, France, Russia and Japan send explorers and archaeologists to find and excavate these lost cities.

The book is part adventure story as it details the horrendous conditions that the explorers endured trying to find the cities, many lost in the midst of nearly impassible deserts. The book also details the nature of their discoveries, describing the art and languages discovered. Finally, the book discusses at length the ethics of the removal of the art and manuscripts by Western archaeologists. Hopkirk certainly makes a strong case that the these cultures should be better known and that Western museums should do a better job of showcasing the materials they have.

Call me a cultural imperialist, but I am less troubled by the removal of the art and manuscripts then Hopkirk. As a conceptual matter, I am all for keeping cultural materials in the country of origin (as inapplicable as the modern nation-state is to many ancient cultures). However, the reality is that many of the countries that "should" be protecting their cultural patrimony have failed to do so. China presents something of a special case - specifically the Cultural Revolution and China's subsequent handling of its cultural heritage - are examples of systematic, deliberate destruction of cultural assets. As Foreign Devils on the Silk Road makes clear, the treasures of Central Asia were hardly being protected by the relevant authorities at the time. In the instance of some painted caves, the caves were used to house soldiers resulting in destruction of important murals. So, on balance, I lean toward sympathizing with the archaeologists who removed the manuscripts and art that they could take. Certainly today, where China is actively preserving and protecting its cultural assets, the conduct of Western archaeologists would constitute theft. But this wasn't the case at the end of the 19th century and there is strong evidence that, but for the work of these explorers, nothing of this cultural and artistic heritage would have survived. ( )