Excavated articles

In 1900, about 50,000 cultural relics were found in a sanctum sealed behind the northern wall of Grotto No 16. These articles included Buddhist sutras, documents, embroidery works and paintings from the 4th to the 12th centuries. Apart from ancient Chinese documents, there were also documents in other ancient languages, including Tibetan, Sanskrit and Uygur. The subjects of these documents include religion, literature, contracts, ledgers and official files. This discovery, which attracted world attention, is of great research value for supplementing and emending ancient Chinese documents.