Lands of Asia layouts (Eng) 26.11.21

part iv | migrations of cultures
far as the Western Sea [i.e. the Mediterranean, E.R.], and then returned. Previous
generations never reached these regions. […] No doubt he prepared a report on
their customs and investigated their precious and unusual [products].’ Gan Ying tried
to reach Rome, but a shortage of funds forced him to return to China.
Gan Ying’s journey was a natural consequence of the gradual exploration of the
roads from Central Asia going west by the Chinese. Although Gan Ying was the first
Chinese person to reach the Eastern Mediterranean, the Chinese had in fact received
their earliest knowledge about the countries near the Eastern Mediterranean from
Zhang Qian, who had gathered much information while in Bactria. Zhang Qian’s
reports are quoted extensively in Sima Qian’s Shiji, and used in particular in Fa Ye’s
Hou Hanshu, where he writes ‘Going southwest more than a hundred days further
on horseback, you reach Tiaozhi [Upper Mesopotamia – E.R.]. In the kingdom
of Tiaozhi there is a town on the top of a hill […] It borders on the Western Sea
[Mediterranean Sea]’. 8
Soon after Zhang Qian’s journey, under the same Emperor Wu-di (140–87 BC),
a constant exchange of embassies with Dayuan and other states of Central Asia was
established, with at least a dozen Chinese embassies being sent each year. In 113 BC,
for the first time, the Chinese established diplomatic relations with Anxi (Parthia).
An embassy was sent to visit the town of Ctesiphon, which was at that time the capital
of Parthia, a few thousand kilometres from the Chinese capital Changan.
Following this, the Parthian ruler sent his envoys between 111 and 105 BC ‘to
see China’, as textual sources say, with presents for the Chinese court of eggs of large
birds (ostriches) and conjurers from ‘Li-kan’.
Researchers have established that Li-kan, or Lixuan, corresponds to the city of
Alexandria, founded by Alexander the Great in Upper Egypt. Thus, the period between
111 and 105 BC is a crucial date in the history of the Silk Road, as documentary
evidence from this time is the first proof of its existence over the formidable distance
from Egypt in the West to China in the East.
Diplomatic envoys were perhaps the first to travel along the route, and trade
caravans probably followed.
The conjurors from Alexandria occupy a special place in this exchange because, as
Chinese sources testify, before their arrival in China, the art of illusion was unknown
here. A renowned scholar of cultural links between China and Africa, V.A. Velgus,
believed that the arrival of the conjurers from Alexandria at the end of the 2nd
century BC may have been the impetus not only for the introduction of this art form
in China, but ultimately also for the evolution of traditional Chinese theatre.
The art of illusion appears to have originated, like many other art forms, in
the countries of the eastern Mediterranean. Egyptian and Chaldean magicians
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