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[제　목] Exhibit shows Khan's Mongolian legacy

[작성자] CNN

[작성일] 2002년7월9일

[화 일] 화일없음

Exhibit shows Khan's Mongolian legacy

Exhibit shows Khan's Mongolian legacy

WASHINGTON (AP) -- When Westerners think of Genghis Khan, it's usually as a conqueror who
led fierce Mongol warriors to the edge of Europe. Visitors to the Smithsonian Institution are about
to get a completely different look at him.

In Mongolia, Genghis Khan is revered as the man who united the country, brought the people
literacy and instituted the principles of participatory government seen in today's democracy.

That legacy is featured in a new exhibition, "Modern Mongolia: Reclaiming Genghis Khan," which
opened this week at the Smithsonian's National Museum of Natural History.

It will remain through October 25 and then move to Middlebury College in Vermont. It may also
appear in other museums.

Hundreds of artifacts -- art and clothing and the goods of daily life -- illustrate what life has been
like in Mongolia at different times.

Included are three gers, portable native homes known elsewhere as yurts, still used in Mongolia.

The first gives visitors a glimpse at everyday life in a wealthy home around 1900, when Mongolia
was ruled by the Manchu dynasty of China. A second shows life in the 1960s, under Communist
rule, and the third illustrates life in modern Mongolia -- with many goods that would not appear out
of place in an American household.

The exhibit tells about the Mongolian people, said Paula Sabloff of the University of Pennsylvania
Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology.

"They look different from us, but they have a lot in common with us," said Sabloff, curator of the
show.

Mongolian culture celebrates the rugged individualist -- the lone cowboy -- able to make his own
way, and it is a culture with a strong sense of humor, two traits also valued in America, she said.

But there is one difference the exhibit makes clear.

"Today, Mongolians identify Genghis Khan with their contemporary democratic principles," said
Sabloff.

She pointed out that Genghis Khan united Mongolia and established his government in 1206, nine
years before King John of England signed the Magna Carta, from which England and the United
States trace a tradition of individual rights.

True, Genghis Khan didn't run a modern democracy. But it included a form of participatory
government, councils where wise men met and discussed the problems of the day -- usually war
and peace -- and made suggestions.

And he brought his people independence by eliminating foreign rule, literacy by having an alphabet
adapted to their language, and established the rule of written law and the equality of all citizens
under the law. He also insisted on respect for women.

Born in 1162 and named Temujin, Genghis Khan was only 9 years old when his father, a clan
leader, was killed by the Tatars.

The youngster proved to be a charismatic leader, organizing the tribes in alliances that he built
into a military state that eventually stretched from China to Europe.

Today, Mongolia rests between Russia and China, a land of deserts and mountains and self-
reliant people whose story is told in the new exhibit.