The Aga Khan Museum in Toronto

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http://www.thestar.com/entertainment/vi ... useum.html

Treasures from Arab dhow on display at Aga Khan Museum
Ship sank more than 1,000 years ago with its cargo intact. Here’s a look at some of its objects.

White ware cups and stands, Hebei Province, China, ca. 825-50. Some of the most valuable items found on the sunken Dhow, these were highly prized by Chinese aristocrats, who saw them as top-flight finery partially for their resemblance to silver. They represented the pinnacle of technology at the time, having been fired in innovative kilns during the Tang dynasty.

White ware cups and stands, Hebei Province, China, ca. 825-50. Some of the most valuable items found on the sunken Dhow, these were highly prized by Chinese aristocrats, who saw them as top-flight finery partially for their resemblance to silver. They represented the pinnacle of technology at the time, having been fired in innovative kilns during the Tang dynasty.

By: Murray Whyte Visual arts, Published on Thu Dec 18 2014

Sometime in the 9th century, a 17-metre Arab cargo ship headed west from China along the maritime Silk Route went down in shallow water near Indonesia’s Belitung Island. It took more than 1,000 years for it to be found — in this case, by a recreational diver in 1998, whose casual investigation of what appeared to be a lumpy mound of sea floor turned out to be much more than he had bargained for.

When the handful of ceramic trinkets recovered by that diver reached expert hands, it was clear he had stumbled onto a major discovery: the earliest-known Arab dhow (the Arab word for a ship of this kind) ever found, with its complete cargo intact.

The ship’s hold contained some 57,000 pieces, some precious, some commercial, some simply practical, and most of them nicely preserved by their watery tomb. No human remains were found on board — the water is shallow, warm and just a kilometre or so off shore, making escape a not-unlikely outcome for all involved — and the dhow held tight to its bounty for all this time.

Why anyone didn’t come to retrieve its precious things will be forever a mystery, but what it left behind helps give shape to the relationship between two of the dominant dynasties of the time: the Tang in China and the Abbasid Empire, which stretched across North Africa all the way east into modern-day Afghanistan.

The Aga Khan Museum has puts a handful of those things on view, opening a window into a long-lost past. Here’s a look at some key objects.

The Lost Dhow: A Discovery from the Maritime Silk Route continues at the Aga Khan Museum, 77 Wynford Dr., until April 26.
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