The Library Cave and the Making of Mogao

Mogao owes much of its modern fame to a single sealed chamber, Cave 17, known as the Library Cave, discovered by the Daoist caretaker Wang Yuanlu in 1900 when he noticed a crack in a wall behind one of the larger caves. Behind it lay a chamber packed with tens of thousands of manuscripts, printed texts, paintings on silk and paper, and other documents in a dozen languages and scripts, apparently sealed up around the eleventh century for reasons still debated by scholars, possibly to protect them from an approaching threat or simply to retire material no longer in active use. Among the finds was a printed copy of the Diamond Sutra dated to 868 CE, widely cited as the oldest complete dated printed book known to survive. Foreign expeditions led by figures such as Aurel Stein and Paul Pelliot acquired large portions of the hoard in the early twentieth century, dispersing it to collections in London, Paris and elsewhere, an episode that remains a sensitive one in the history of the site and of Chinese cultural heritage more broadly. Beyond the Library Cave, the wider complex preserves paintings spanning nearly a millennium of stylistic change, from early Indian and Central Asian influenced Buddha images through Tang dynasty court style scenes, reflecting Dunhuang's position as a meeting point for Chinese, Central Asian, Indian and Persian artistic traditions carried along the Silk Road. Conservation concerns over humidity, light and visitor traffic now limit which caves the public can enter, and replica caves and a visitor centre screen introductory material before guests reach the cliff itself.