I’ve sometimes wished that I had gone to Yale. I’ve wondered if my life would be different had I studied there? Where might I be standing now if I had applied? Given my natural inclinations for dogged research, I might have become an archivist working with rare books and tablets or I might have become a preparator who restores and studies precious artifacts . . .
As if the Yale Babylonian Collection weren’t enough to make me want to revisit that long-ago choice, the university has recently published an on-line Silk Road Database of over six thousand recent photographs taken by Yale faculty and students during seminar trips along the overland Silk Road.
Food stands ripe with fresh produce and spices, ancient visages of Buddha carved into solid rock, artists and weavers plying their trades. Images from today of lifestyles that may be all but disappeared by the time our children set out on journeys of their own.
This beautiful collection of photographs serves as a resource anyone interested in art and archaeology, religious studies, and history of the Silk Road. I urge you see it for yourself. (Words by Laura Kelley; Photograph of Kashgar Old City Fruit Sellers by Abbey Newman, Yale Silk Road Database.)