After a three-month run at the Denver Museum of Nature
& Science which drew 175,000 visitors, “Genghis Khan: The Exhibition,”
opens tomorrow at the Tech Museum in San Jose. On display is an array of
artifacts, many of which have never previously left Mongolia, and elaborate
re-creations of Mongolian life during Chinggis Khaan”s time.

The organizers note that “there”s hardly anything
that is known to have been owned by Chinggis or that his hand touched,”
they were able to assemble close to 250 artifacts drawn from Mongolia”s
Archaeology Institute, five Mongolian museums, private collectors and — in the
case of an 800-year-old mummy — the Smithsonian. They include shamans”
costumes, elaborately woven silk robes, finely crafted gold bracelets and
beautifully detailed swords, saddles and armor from the period.

William Fitzhugh of the Smithsonian Institution”s Arctic Studies
Center, says Chinggis was
an extraordinary ruler whose historical legacy needs to be reassessed in the
West. Records from the period, many only now being uncovered, “give you a
view of a person who is a superb organizer, a superb lawmaker, a fair and judicious
ruler, somebody who supported women and gave women a lot of rights,” says
Fitzhugh, who is a consultant for the exhibition. “It”s wrong to say that Chinggis
created a democracy, but, for the time, he was remarkably enlightened.” It
is the accomplishments of this “other Genghis” — as well as the
achievements of his sons and grandsons — that are at the heart of the show,

The exhibition has 10 videos on aspects of life at the
time, giant video maps, interactive (and kid-friendly) games and one exhibit that
gives you the sense of being caught in the middle of a herd of horses. There
are replicas of tribal villages and such war technology as a trebuchet, a siege
engine designed by Chinese engineers that the Mongolians incorporated into
their armies.

Each visitor”s ticket has a representation of one of five
or six different people who would have lived during the time of the empire, and
in each room, there are computers where you can go and see what happens to that
person over the course of time.

In addition, “we have a whole bunch of demonstrators
showing how the villages were set up and letting you fire a catapult. You get
to put on Mongolian-style robes, and what I really like is that we have live
entertainment every day for a couple of hours. The same traditions of dance and
music that were around then are still around now — which is wonderful,”
the organizers have said in a promotional interview.

They predict that those who visit the exhibit will not
only come away with just a very different view of Chinggis Khaan but also of
“ancient history in Asia, something Americans generally don”t know very
much about. That”s the central thrust of the exhibit: Let”s familiarize
Americans with a particular period of Mongol history from a time when Mongol
and Asian history changed the world.”