You can now “see” a whole load of manuscripts, paintings and artefacts from ancient caves and temples along the Silk Road on the Internet in digital form.

By visiting http://idp.nlc.gov.cn or http://idp.bl.uk, websites developed jointly by the British Library and the National Library of China you can see a collection of artefacts recovered from the Dunhuang cave in China in the early 20th Century.

“The cave was sealed in AD 1000 and completely hidden,” Dr Susan Whitfield, Director of the British Library's International Dunhuang Project told the BBC programme Go Digital. “It was discovered accidentally in 1900 and when it was open, it was found to contain these 50,000 items of manuscripts and paintings.” These offer a glimpse into the daily life of merchants, officials, soldiers, monks and farmers in Silk Road towns.

“The idea is that scholars will always get as close as they possibly can on their computer screens to the objects,” explained Dr Whitfield. The artefacts are now spread across the world, in major museums in Beijing, London, Paris and St Petersburg. The other reason behind making digital copy of the artefacts is to ensure that they are preserved for future generations.