More than 200 artifacts from Inner Mongolia, an autonomous region of China, are currently on display at the Natural History Museum of Los Angeles County through May 22. According to museum officials, the exhibition is the first collaboration between an American museum and the government of the People's Republic of China.
The exhibition, titled "Genghis Khan: Treasures from Inner Mongolia," spans 3,500 years of Mongol history from the second millennium B.C. to the 14th century, culminating with the reign of Genghis Khan.During the 13th century, the infamous Genghis Khan, or "oceanic or universal ruler," conquered and reigned over an empire that extended from eastern Hungary across Asia to Korea. Known for his legendary brutality, Genghis Khan is credited, nonetheless, with the development of a written Mongol language, a comprehensive legal system and the efficient "orto" courier system, an earlier- and more rigorous - version of the pony express.
The collection includes gold and silver plates and vessels, bronze weapons, documents, pottery and Chinese blue and white porcelain.
Some highlights are a bronze Yin-Yang sword with the figure of a man on one side of the hilt and a woman on the other, once used by the Eastern Hu people (11th to the 4th century B.C.), a pair of tomb guardian figures dating from the Northern Wei Dynasty (A.D. 386 to 534), and flat-bottomed gold cups used to ladle wine similar to the ones Marco Polo described seeing at the courts of Genghis Khan and his grandson Kublai Kahn.
In addition to the artifacts, the multimedia exhibit will also include a full-size re-creation of the recently excavated 14th-century tomb of a Mongol nobleman.
The exhibit is scheduled to travel to the American Museum of Natural History in New York in September and to the Tennessee State Museum in Nashville in December before continuing on to Canada.
Admission to the Los Angeles exhibit and museum, which is open Wednesday to Sunday, is $8. Information: (213) 744-3466.