Kazakhstan to Rebury Ancient Warlord, Fearing ‘Curse’

Jewelry found in the burial mound of the first “Golden Man” in 1970

© RIA Novosti. Dmitriy Korobeinikov

14:28 28/06/2013

Source: Ria Novosti

Tags: Altai Princess, Golden Man, Kazakhstan

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MOSCOW, June 28 (RIA Novosti) – Ever heard about the curse of the pharaohs? Well, how about the curse of a 2,500-year-old chief of a nomadic Scythian tribe that brings about floods, droughts, livestock decimation and high atmospheric pressure?

Though the curse of the pharaohs has repeatedly been debunked as myth, the Scythian curse is very real, say locals in a remote area of eastern Kazakhstan where the chieftain’s remains were discovered – and where they will be reinterred this weekend to appease his spirit, to the chagrin of archeologists.

In 2003, an archeological expedition dug up a burial mound in the Shiliktinskaya Valley to find a Golden Man – a presumed leader of the Saka tribe, a branch of the Scythian nomads that populated Central Asia and southern Siberia in the 1st millennium BC.

The pagan Saka fought the ancient Persians and Indians, and grew rich through trading across the great steppes of Central Asia. Some of their wealth ended up in the tombs of their chieftains, who were buried wearing jewelry and gold-plated armor – like the man in the Shiliktinskaya mound, the third such find in Kazakhstan since 1970.

© RIA Novosti. Dmitriy Korobeinikov

Golden Man found in Kazakhstan in 1970

But not all Golden Men are equally lucky. While one found in 1970 went on to become Kazakhstan’s unofficial symbol, the chieftain from the Shiliktinskaya Valley has been blamed for climate change and other problems.

Since the mound was excavated, the area around it has been hit by several floods, a drought, a mass loss of livestock and an increase in births of children with learning disabilities, locals said, Kazakh television KTK reported.

“[Since the excavation], we have had snowfall and storms in winter. The weather has turned upside down ecologically. We have got [high atmospheric] pressure now,” local woman Aiduriya Kumpisova told KTK.

“The elders blame it on the excavation,” agreed Aidyn Egubayev, who has spent five years campaigning for the reburial of the Golden Man, Tengrinews.kz said Friday.

Scholars dismissed the rumors, pointing to global climate change as the reason for the area’s problems, KTK said.

But archeologists had to concede to reinter the Golden Man at the request of the Kazakh Culture Ministry and after “unrest” among locals, the channel said. He will be returned to the mound on Sunday.

This is not the first time Kazakhstan has given in to the demands of the supernatural: Last year, residents in the town of Karabulak sacrificed a white camel to stop a “suicide epidemic” allegedly instigated by the devil.

Russia’s republic of Altai campaigned for two decades for the return of the Siberian Ice Maiden (also known as the Altai Princess), a 2,500-year-old mummy found in Siberia in 1993. Locals claimed the removal of the mummy had brought various calamities upon the republic, and managed to have the Siberian Ice Maiden returned to a local museum, though not her burial mound.

Wooden leg from the Tarim Basin (Turfan)

ARCHÉOLOGIE Source: Pourlascience.fr La plus vieille jambe de bois Une jambe de bois de qualité étonnante a été retrouvée dans une tombe du IIIesiècle avant notre ère, du bassin du Tarim, en Chine. Ce serait la plus ancienne prothèse de jambe fonctionnelle. François Savatier 16     Une tentative de reconstruction de l'usage de la jambe de bois retrouvée à Tourfan en Chine occidentale. DAI/S. Lochmann La prothèse de jambe, façonnée dans le peuplieret la corne, comporte quatre parties. Mayke Wagner, Institut archéologique allemand (DAI) Carte du bassin du Tarim Wikimedia Pour en savoir plus Xiao Li et al., Archaeological and palaopathological study on the Third/second century BC grave from Turfan, China : Individual health history and regional implications,Quaternary international, 8 mai 2013. E. Ho, Loulan, le royaume du désert, Pour la Science N°328, février 2005. L'auteur Francois Savatier est journaliste àPour la Science. Entouré de montagnes, le bassin du Tarim, entre Chine et Afghanistan, est l’une des régions les plus sèches du monde. Cette particularité assure une très bonne conservation des matériaux organiques. Pour preuve, Mayke Wagner, de l’Institut archéologique allemand, et ses collègues viennent de trouver dans une tombe une prothèse de jambe en bois vieille de 2 200 à 2 300 ans. Alors qu’à l'époque, Alexandre le grand avançait en Asie centrale par l’Ouest et que l’Empire chinois des Han s'étendait depuis l’Est, des communautés agropastorales occupaient les oasis du Tarim. Celles du Nord-Ouest voisinaient avec les Xiongnus, une confédération de tribus proto turco-mongoles, qui dans les derniers siècles avant notre ère établit un empire en Transbaïkalie, en Mongolie et en Chine du Nord. Par ailleurs, dans le désert du Taklamakan, dans le Sud du bassin du Tarim, de nombreuses momies d'hommes et de femmes de type européen ont été retrouvées, tandis que des Scythes vivaient dans le massif de l'Altaï en Mongolie voisine et que des proto-Iraniens occupaient le Nord-Est du Tarim. Bref, aucune certitude n'existe sur l'appartenance ethnique des habitants du Nord-Est du bassin du Tarim dans les derniers siècles de notre ère. Les archéologues chinois, pour leur part, se refèrent à un royaume de Cheshi, cité dans les textes chinois anciens, sans qu'il soit possible d'affirmer qu'il était relié aux Xiongnus. Quoi qu'il en soit, la tombe récemment fouillée relève d'une culture agro-pastorale de l'oasis de Tourfan, dans l'actuel Turkestan chinois (Xinjiang). La tombe fait partie d'une nécropole de 31 tombes située à 35 kilomètres à l’Est de Tourfan. Un homme y a été enterré à un mètre de profondeur avec un peu de vaisselle et deux arcs à double courbure, typiques des guerriers montés nomades d’Asie centrale (Xiongnu, Huns, etc.), redoutés de toutes les civilisations de l’Antiquité. La tombe, qui avait été bourrée de paille lors de son inhumation, fut réouverte par la suite pour y placer une femme, peut-être sa compagne. D’une taille d'au moins 1,75 mètre et de constitution robuste, l’homme semble avoir eu une vie active jusqu’à sa mort. Toutefois, il a été ateint de  la tuberculose, qui a laissé des nécroses sur ses vertèbres et ses côtes. L'individu semble avoir résisté pendant des années à la maladie. La surface de ses os nécrosés est en effet, ce qui prouve que l’infection a été stoppée des années avant sa mort. Toutefois, la maladie l’a sérieusement estropié, puisqu’elle a provoqué une ankylose osseuse de son genou gauche, c’est-à-dire une fusion complète du fémur, de la rotule, du péroné et du tibia. Résultat : sa jambe s’est retrouvée bloquée selon un angle de 135 degrés et tournée vers l’intérieur de 11 degrés. Impossible dès lors de marcher ! Heureusement, les artisans de l'oasis de Tourfan semblent avoir eu assez de savoir-faire pour l’aider. Ils ont façonné une prothèse de jambe d'une qualité étonnante : elle est comparable aux prothèses utilisées pour les mutilés de guerre après 1918 ! Longue de 89,2 centimètres, elle comporte quatre parties. D’abord, une plaque de bois (probablement en peuplier) de 52 centimètres de longueur et jusqu’à 2,5 centimètres d'épaisseur percée de 16 trous d’arrimage montait jusqu'à la taille. Elle se prolongeait par un pilon, dont l'extrémité s’enfonce dans une corne de chèvre ou de mouton destinée à assurer le contact avec le sol. Finalement, une rondelle taillée dans un sabot d’âne ou de cheval limitait l’enfoncement du pilon dans les sols meubles. Cette prothèse de jambe se fixait à la cuisse par l’extérieur, comme l’indique l’usure de la plaque fémurale par le genou. Les deux trous supérieurs servaient probablement à fixer le haut de la prothèse à une ceinture, tandis que les six paires de trous placées de part et d’autre de la plaque acceuillaient sans doute des lacets de cuir enserrant la jambe. L’usure des trous et de la plaque indique que cette jambe de bois a été utilisée pendant des années, jusqu’à faire partie du corps de son propriétaire au point d'être placée dans sa tombe avec lui. Les datations au carbone 14 de 10 échantillons d’os et de bois placent la vie des occupants de la tombe entre 200 et 300 avant notre ère, et l’abattage de l’arbre dans lequel fut taillée la jambe de bois vers 320. Avant la découverte de la jambe de bois de Tourfan, la plus ancienne prothèse de jambe attestée était la jambe de bois et de bronze découverte en 1885 dans la tombe d’un riche habitant de Capoue, en Italie, qui daterait de 2300 ans d'après les céramiques retrouvées dans la tombe. Mais elle n'était guère fonctionnelle. À peu près aussi ancienne, la jambe de bois de Tourfan est donc la plus ancienne prothèse de jambe fonctionnelle de l’humanité.

The Reception of Greek and Roman Culture in East Asia

The Reception of Greek and Roman Culture in East Asia: Texts & Artefacts, Institutions & Practices

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Thursday, 4 July 2013 – Saturday, 6 July 2013, Berlin

This conference sits squarely at the crossroads of many important contemporary conversations, both scholarly and popular. Over the past decade, scholars have examined the reception of the ancient Greek and Roman cultures around the globe. This has been done by analyzing the role of ancient Mediterranean culture in a variety of cultural instances; for example post-antique texts and images, ideology and institutions, as well as rituals and practices. The research has been wide-ranging, including examinations, for instance, of Greek tragedy in 20th-century African theatre and Latin poetry in colonial Mexico. Still there has not yet been a project dedicated solely to the reception of Greece and Rome in East Asia, despite tantalizing clues concerning the wealth of material available for investigation: from the Isopo Monogatari (伊曾保物語), a 16^th-century Japanese edition of Aesop’s Fables, to a theatrical season in Beijing in July 2012 directed by the famed Li Liuyi that included both Sophocles’ Antigone (安提戈涅) and the Tibetan epic King Gesar (格萨尔王).

This conference will explore the reception(s) of Greek and Roman culture in East Asia from antiquity to the present. That is, the conference seeks to explore the movement and transmission of knowledge between Western antiquity and East Asia as well as the circulation of this knowledge within East Asia. In particular, we are interested in the question of how and why ancient Greek and Roman texts, images, and material cultures and the knowledge and ideas contained within them have been adapted and refigured in East Asian texts, imagery, and cultural artefacts.

The ever-growing complexity of the relationship (economically, politically, and culturally) between East Asia and the “West” makes the study of the reception of Greco-Roman antiquity in East Asian cultures particularly relevant and timely, and most importantly not just a matter of academic interest. Since “Western” culture’s self-conception begins in Europe with ancient Greece and ancient Rome, the reception of ancient Greco-Roman cultures in East Asia provides an excellent point of reference for current intercultural and interdisciplinary dialogues in an increasingly globalizing world, particularly since the present era might be understood as a period characterized by an increase in the frequency, speed, and prevalence at which knowledge transfers between various points and people around the globe. This conference aims to explore this point of reference by bringing together an international and interdisciplinary group of scholars and practitioners (performing artists, writers, visual artists, and those working in theaters and museums) to analyze the many diverse aspects of the reception of Greek and Roman culture in East Asia.

On this webpage, you will find a wide variety of information relating to the conference, but if you still have questions, please feel free to contact us at:greeceandromeinasia@gmail.com

Preliminary Program

4 July 2013

13.00 Registration

13.30-15.00
I Opening Session

13.30 Introduction: Almut-Barbara Renger (Freie Universitaet Berlin)

13.45 Bernhard Kytzler (University of KwaZulu-Natal): Teaching Classics in China in the Late Twentieth Century Fritz-Heiner Mutschler (Peking University): Western Classics at Chinese Universities: A Few Subjective Observations

14.30 Discussion

15.00-17.15 Plenary Session

II Classical Scholarship and Translation

15.00 Zhi Zhang (Peking University): Lukianos in China

15.30 Lihua Zhang (Peking University): The Vernacular Chinese as a Style: A Study on Zhou Zuore’s Modern Translation of Theocritus’ Idyll X

16.00 Xin Fan (Freie Universitaet Berlin): Imagining Classical Antiquity as a Global Concept?: The Debate on the Periodization in the Ancient World in Twentieth-Century China

16.30 Discussion

17.15 Coffee break

17.45-19.30 Parallel Sections

III Ancient Contact Between East and West: China	IV Ancient Contact Between East and West
17.45 Jingling Chen (Harvard University): Socrates Visits Beijing: Intellectual Thoughts on the Eve of 1949	17.45 Shuai Luo (Peking University): The Begram Treasure and the Roman Commercial Expansion
18.15 Krisztina Hoppál (Eötvös Loránd University, Budapest): Chinese Perceptions of the Roman Empire: A Mysterious Country in the Westernmost Part of the World	18.15 Daniel Sarefield (Fitchburg State University): “If I return to Scythia a better man than I left”: Anacharsis the Wise Barbarian
18.45 Discussion	18.45 Discussion

19.30 Reception. Speech by Yan P. Lin

5 July 2013

10.00-11.15 Plenary Session

V Late Antique Asian Literature and Hellenistic Greek Sources

10.00 Andrej Petrovic (University of Durham): Alexander the Great in Malay:Romances of Alexander the Great

10.30 Discussion

11.15 Coffee break

11.45-14.00 Plenary Session

VI The Reception of Classical Languages and Legends in the History of Japan	VII Greek Myth in Japanese Popular Culture
11.45 Ichiro Taida (I-Shou University in Taiwan): The Earliest History of the Reception of Classical Languages in Japan	11.45 Luciana Cardi (Osaka University): The Function of Greek Myths in Contemporary Japanese Literature
12.15 Jerzy Nowak Wojciech (Adam Mickiewicz University): Jesuits’ Linguistic Efforts on Creating Catholic Vocabulary in Japan – the Case of Japanese Hidden Christians	12.15 Carla Scilabra (University of Torino): Back to the Future: Reviving Classical Figures in Japanese Comics
12.45 Timon Screech (SOAS): The Legend of Zeuxis and Japanese Painting	12.45 Jen Cresswell (University of Edinburgh): Greek Myth in Anime and Manga
13.15 Discussion	13.15 Discussion

14.00 Lunch

15.30-17.15 Parallel Sections

VIII Greek and Roman Themes in Asian Material Culture	IX Sculpture in East and West
15.30 Cynthea J. Bogel (Kyushu University): Grapes, Gods, and Men: Greco-Roman and Asian Motifs on an Eight-Century Japanese Buddha Pedestal	15.30 Lukas Nickel (SOAS): China and the Hellenistic World – Sculpture as Evidence for Cross-Asian Contacts During 3rd Century BC
16.00 Chia-Lin Hsu (Academia Sinica, Taiwan): Politics, Culture and Neo-Classical Architecture in Taiwan	16.00 Rui Nakamura (The Tokyo University of the Arts): The Reception of Parthenon Sculpture in Modern Japanese Art School
16.30 Discussion	16.30 Discussion

17.15 Coffee break

17.45-19.15 Parallel Sections

X Translation as Reception	XI Staging Ancient Greek Drama in East Asian Theatre
17.45 Bill M. Mak (University of Hong Kong): The Book of Four Gates 四門經 and Ptolemy’s Tetrabiblos	17.45 Yu Tianshu (Peking University) and Liu Haiying (China Agricultural University): On Queen Hudijin: A Medea-like Chinese Woman in Guo Moruo’s Historical Play The Peacock’s Gallbladder
18.15 Jinyu Liu (DePauw University): Translation as Reception, Reception as Argument: Western Antiquity in China in the 1920s-1930s	18.15 Kuan-wu Lin (Freie Universitaet Berlin): The Revival of Greek Tragedies by Fusions with Eastern Theatre Traditions
18.45 Discussion	18.45 Discussion

19.30-20.00
XII Plenary Session: Round Table & Closing Remarks

20.00 Social Dinner

Buddha sculptures found in northern Bangladesh

Posted by TANNArchaeoHeritage, Archaeology, Asia, Bangladesh, Breakingnews, South Asia1:00 PM

Several bronze-made Gautama Buddha sculptures and some other artifacts, including an ancient brick-built structure with a lotus-shaped inflorescence have been found recently during an excavation at Jagaddal Budhha Bihar archaeological site of Dhamurhat upazila, some sixty five kilometers away from Naogaon district town.

Several sculptures found during excavation at Jagaddal Budhha Bihar
archaeological site in Naogaon [Credit: Mukul Hossain]

Though many Buddha Bihars (Buddha monastery) have been discovered in the country, all of them were square or geometrical in shape, only this bihar is shaped like a lotus inflorescence, said archaeologists.

Mahbub Ul Alam, one of the members of the excavation team and custodian of Paharpur Buddha Bihar Archaeological Museum said that some rare sculptures of Gautama Buddha were found, including some ancient brick, granite and black stone built structures and four cells of Buddhist monastery have been found in an excavation at Jagaddal Bihar recently. 

“They also found precious stones, ornamental stone pieces, ancient brick built staircases and broken earthen pots”, he said. The structure was built in the tenth or eleventh century during Pala dynasty. “The locals had their doubts about the authenticity of the Jagaddal Bihar. After digging out some rare artifacts and ancient structures, like the lotus inflorescence, we are now sure that this is the original Jagaddal Bihar”, he said. The archaeologist further added, “It is a rare discovery for our country.”

Archaeologists said, Department of Archaeology started an archaeological excavation one of the ancient cities in the country, Jagaddal, from December 1st, 2012, aiming to find out the history of the archaeological site. The excavation continued till February this year.

Earlier, Archaeology Department excavated Jagaddal Bihar in 1996-1997 and 1997-1998 fiscal years. At that time, they found some rare ornamental artifacts from the archaeological site, they said.
Jagaddala Mahavihara was a Buddhist monastery founded by the later kings of the Pala dynasty, possibly Rampala (1077-1120), most likely at a site near the present village of Jagaddal in Dhamurhat Upazila in the north-west Bangladesh on the border of India, near Paharpur.

The Jagaddal Budhha Bihar archaeological site in Naogaon
[Credit: Mukul Hossain]

Little is known about Jagaddala compared with the other mahaviharas of the era. For many years, its site could not be ascertained. AKM Zakaria inspected five likely locations, all called Jagddal or Jagadal, in the Rajshahi-Malda region- namely Panchagarh, Haripur upazila in Thakurgaon, Bochaganj upazila in Dinajpur, Dhamoirhat upazila in Naogaon, Bamongola of Malda in India. Of these, significant ancient ruins were present only near Jagddal in Naogaon district. Excavations under UNESCO over the past decade have established the site as a Buddhist monastery.

A large number of viharas (monasteries) were established in ancient Bengal and Magadha during the four centuries of Pala rule in north-eastern India (756-1174 AD). Dharampala (781 – 821) is said to have founded 50 viharas himself, including Vikramshila, the premier university of the era. Jagaddala was founded toward the end of the Pala dynasty, most likely by Ramapala (1077-1120). According to Tibetan sources, five great mahaviharas stood out, Vikramshila, Nalanda, Somapura, Odantapura and Jagaddala. The five monasteries formed a network under state supervision.

Jagaddala specialized in Vajrayana Buddhism. A large number of texts that would later appear in the Kanjur and Tenjur were known to have been composed or copied at Jagaddala. It is likely that the earliest dated anthology of Sanskrit verse, the Subhasitaratnakosa, was compiled by Vidyakara at Jagaddala toward the end of the eleventh century or the beginning of the twelfth.

Sakyasribhadra, a Kashmiri scholar who was the last abbot of Nalanda Mahavihara and instrumental in transmitting Buddhism to Tibet, is said to have fled to Tibet in 1204 from Jagaddala when Muslim incursions seemed imminent. Historian Sukumar Dutt tentatively placed the final destruction of Jagadala to 1207; in any case it seems to have been the last mahavihara to be overrun.

In 1999, Jagaddala was submitted as a tentative site for inclusion on the list of UNESCO World Heritage sites. UNESCO reported that the excavation has revealed an extensive mound, 105 meters by 85 meters, which represents the archaeological remains of a Buddhist monastery. The findings have included terracotta plaques, ornamental bricks, nails, a gold ingot and three stone images of deities.

Author: Rabiul Hasan | Source: The Daily Star [June 26, 2013]

The Cloth of Gold

Cleveland Museum of Art's new textile gallery surveys riches from Mongol booty to treasures of Ottoman caliphs

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By Steven Litt, The Plain Dealer 
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on June 26, 2013 at 12:00 PM, updated June 27, 2013 at 12:57 PM

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MORE ON THE NORTH WING

• Japanese and Korean treasures dazzle at the Cleveland Museum of Art after years in storage
• From jungle and desert to display case: The Cleveland Museum of Art's pre-Columbian and Native-American collections reopen Sunday
• Cleveland Museum of Art's new textile gallery surveys riches from Mongol booty to treasures of Ottoman caliphs
• Cleveland Museum of Art's alluring new North Wing galleries open Sunday

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CLEVELAND, Ohio -- If you want a snapshot of what the Cleveland Museum of Art’s eight-year, $350 million expansion and renovation is all about, visit the new textile gallery in the recently installed North Wing, which opens to the general public on Sunday.
The gallery is the first in the history of the museum devoted solely to textiles in the permanent collection. That’s ironic because the 4,500 objects in the department represent more than 10 percent of the museum’s holdings.
And it’s important not only because of the textile collection’s quality, but because it covers 62 countries and 4,000 years of human history.
The maiden exhibition in the new gallery, which is devoted to luxury Islamic silk textiles from Medieval Spain to the Middle East, Central Asia and India, is a milestone for the museum.
It’s also chance for Clevelanders to see what they’ve been missing for decades because, before its expansion, the institution didn’t have enough room to show off its textiles properly.

View full sizeA 19th-century Uzbek silk embroidered surcoat once owned by Jeptha H. Wade II is one of the focal pieces in the inaugural exhibition of the Cleveland Museum of Art's North Wing textile gallery.Steven Litt, The Plain Dealer

 Until 1996, the museum showed textiles in a lower level corridor of its 1916 building, and before that, in a study room.
While important textiles were sprinkled in galleries throughout the museum after that, many of the collection's treasures remained in storage, out of view.
Case in point: It was in 1998 that I first encountered the museum’s late 19th-century silk embroidered surcoat, or overcoat, from Uzbekistan.
Louise Mackie had just arrived at the Cleveland Museum of Art as its new curator of textiles and Islamic art after having led the Department of Textiles at the Royal Ontario Museum in Toronto since 1985. During an interview, she showed me around her department’s offices and storerooms in the lower level of the museum’s 1916 building.
The surcoat was hanging on a rod in a closet to protect it from exposure to light. It was a brilliant sunburst of bold floral patterns in a background of yellow, shot through with flashes of red, sky blue, green and black.
I remember being stunned by this bright, aggressive, in-your-face garment. I thought it would look perfect if worn like the plumage of a strutting peacock by a potentate along the Silk Road. I’ve often wondered when I’d see it again.
Now it’s on view in Mackie’s exhibition as a focal piece in the new gallery.
The show, which will be on view for a year before Mackie rotates through another selection of textiles, explores how techniques, styles, patterns and images have flowed through Islamic cultures united by the silk trade.
It also demonstrates the desire of kings and caliphs to send messages of authority and power through sumptuous luxury goods.

View full sizeA detail of the "Cloth of Gold" at the Cleveland Museum of Art.Cleveland Museum of Art

In 1989, for example, the museum bought its magnificent “Cloth of Gold,” made in central Asia in the mid-13th century by craftsmen from eastern Iran who were enslaved by Genghis Kahn’s invading Mongol forces and distributed among his generals and members of his family as human booty.
For their new masters, the craftsmen wove exotic fabrics such as the “Cloth of Gold,” which fuses Chinese and central Asian motifs, including rampant, winged lions with cloud-like ornaments like epaulettes on their shoulders.
The museum believes the cloth, woven with gold-wrapped threads that gleam softly against royal blue walls in the textile gallery, eventually traveled to Tibet as an imperial gift from the Mongols – a big journey from Iran.
The biggest message of power in the gallery is that of a huge Alhambra Palace silk curtain from the mid-1300s in Granada, Spain.
Woven with inscriptions proclaiming the power of God, the curtain rises 14 feet high on a freestanding display wall almost to the full height of the gallery’s 16-foot ceiling.
It’s a reminder not only of the glories of Muslim Iberia, but of Spain in the middle ages as a society in which Jews and Muslims lived more or less in harmony, or “convivencia,” before the re-conquest of the peninsula by El Cid and the expulsion of the Jews in 1492.
Another object in the exhibition evokes cultural communication across the Christian-Muslim divide.

View full sizeA curtain that once adorned the Alhambra Palace in Granada, Spain, now rises 14 feet high on a display wall in the Cleveland Museum of Art's new textile gallery.Steven Litt, The Plain Dealer

It turns out that a woven silk mantle used in Renaissance-era Spain and Italy to dress statues of the Virgin Mary during religious processions was actually made in the Middle Ages during the Mamluk sultanate in Egypt.
It bears Arabic inscriptions that state: “Glory to our master, the sultan, the king."
 Apparently, such messages didn't offen anyone in the Christian processions. And as the museum points out in a wall label, the Virgin Mary sports a similar silk mantle in a 1430 painting by Italian artist Bambino Vispo.
If there’s one thing missing from the exhibition, it’s the delicious back-story of how some of the pieces on view were collected.
They were purchased in the late 19th and early 20th centuries by Cleveland industrialist Jeptha H. Wade II, grandson of the founder of Western Union, who cruised the Mediterranean in his sleek steam yacht, the Wadena, snatching up artworks that he later donated to the museum, which he also helped to establish.
One of those objects is the Uzbek surcoat. As you stand in the gallery looking at it, it’s fun to think about the journey it took from the Middle East to Cleveland before joining the museum’s collection in 1916.
It is not only a touchstone of central Asian art and history – but a reminder of how wealthy Clevelanders built a collection that now looks better than it has in decades, thanks to the museum’s new expansion.