In 1900, a wandering Taoist monk named Wang Yuanlu was sweeping sand from a cave temple in China's Gobi Desert. He wasn't an archaeologist — just a self-taught priest who'd taken it upon himself to care for the crumbling Mogao Caves near Dunhuang. While clearing a painted corridor, he noticed a crack in the wall. Behind it was a sealed room, roughly ten feet square, packed floor to ceiling with manuscripts. About fifty thousand of them.
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Riddles of the Past·1/2·1′
The place
Mogao Caves (Dunhuang Grottoes)
The Library Cave: 50,000 Manuscripts Sealed for 900 Years
The greatest documentary discovery since the Dead Sea Scrolls
~1002 AD (sealed) — 1900 AD (discovered)Mogao Caves (Dunhuang Grottoes)
Moral of the Story
“The greatest threat to a treasure isn't neglect or war — it's the moment someone shows up who knows exactly what it's worth.”
Characters
W
Wang Yuanlu — the Taoist guardian who found the caveA
Aurel Stein — the explorer who took the manuscriptsP
Paul Pelliot — the French sinologistU
Unknown monks who sealed the cave ~1002 ADSource
Aurel Stein, "Ruins of Desert Cathay" (1912); Paul Pelliot expedition records; International Dunhuang Project (IDP)