The International Dunhuang Project: The Silk Road Online
IDP is a ground-breaking international collaboration to make information and images of all manuscripts, paintings, textiles and artefacts from Dunhuang and archaeological sites of the Eastern Silk Road freely available on the Internet and to encourage their use through educational and research programmes.
IDP partner institutions which both provide data for and act as hosts to the multilingual website and database are:
Major IDP partners providing data include:
IDP’s many other collaborating institutions provide data and work on joint projects.
Read more about IDP…
What's New
400,000 Images
Thanks to the hard work of all our partners worldwide, there are now over 400,000 images of Silk Road manuscripts, paintings, artefacts and photographs available online. Recent additions include Dunhuang scrolls in the National Library of China (search for BD), photographs from the Sven Hedin collection in Sweden (search for 1034.00) and Tibetan pothi from the Stein collection (search for IOL Tib J).
New Videos
IDP has new videos available on our YouTube channel. Conserving the Diamond Sutra tells the story of the sutra scroll, its science and conservation and Donor Profile features IDP supporter The Venerable Phra Kru Samu Lom from the Buddhapadipa Temple in Wimbledon, London.
Records not Available
We are currently carrying out a major redevelopment of the IDP database and website, that will be implemented over the course of 2013. As part of this process, we are checking, validating and consolidating records and images on the database. There will be periods over the next year when records and images will be temporarily unavailable. Apologies in advance for any disruption.
We would appreciate your help. If you notice any errors, spelling mistakes, missing data or images, please do let us know. Please send by email to idp@bl.uk.
What's On
Click here to see details of Conferences, Lectures, Exhibitions and other events.
Site Info
- Site last revised: February 2013.
- Please note: javascript and cookies must be enabled for this site.
- If you have 'blocked' pop-up windows then some internal links will not work.
- The site is optimised for IE6+ on PCs, and for Safari, Firefox, Opera and browsers other than IE on Macs.
- Click here for further technical information.
Site Credits
- Website design by Vic Swift of IDP.
- Database development and web integration by Michael Kaye of sendmetospace with additional support for Chinese version by Mark Mitchenall, using 4D database software and Active4D.
- General text written by Susan Whitfield with additional input from other members of IDP staff and translation by IDP staff in China, Russia, Japan and Germany.
- Some areas of the site such as Educational Projects, Resources, Research and Conservation Papers and My IDP projects are individually authored and accredited. IDP is not responsible for their content.
