This period in the early 4th century was a time of momentous upheavals in the central Chinese government, mentioned in Sogdian Ancient Letter #2 found in the same mailbag. "It is important to understand the historical context in which Miwnay’s letter, and all of the ancient letters, were written. She concludes the letter with bitterness, abandoning the polite conventions with which she began: “Surely…the gods were angry with me on the day when I did your bidding! I would rather be a dog’s or a pig’s wife than yours!” (Sims-Williams 2004). Her predicament demonstrates how difficult it was for a woman alone to take care of herself and her daughter. She goes on to describe the struggle that she faces as a woman left on her own in a foreign city, a situation which has left her begging for help from a series of relatives and acquaintances, none of whom provide her with any assistance. "The letter begins with politeness and an elaborate proper greeting: “To (my) noble lord (and) husband Nanai-dhat, blessing (and) homage on bended knee, as is offered to the gods.” (Sims-Williams 2004). Unfortunately for Miwnay, she is unable to find assistance in this way, and we learn that both Miwnay and her daughter are surviving as servants in a Chinese household. Miwnay’s letter describes her attempts to find assistance among the Sogdians in Dunhuang, giving us a glimpse of the ways in which the diasporic Sogdian communities abroad maintained a network of support for one another (Whitfield 2001, 249). She writes to her husband Nanaidhat directly, who has been missing for some time without sending word to his wife. "Letter #3 is written by Miwnay, a Sogdian woman who accompanied her husband to Dunhuang and has now been abandoned there along with her daughter Shayn. Regarding letter number three I quote from the " Telling the Sogdian Story: A Freer/ Sackler Digital Exhibition Project that was available online in September 2020: The third letter provides remarkable insight into life in a time and place for which documentation is minimal. 2 and 5) concern commercial activity of the writers. Two of the letters that Stein discovered were sent by a lady in distress who had been abandoned in Dunhuang (nos. Sir Aurel Stein's discovery showed that paper was used by Silk Road merchants throughout the oasis cities of Central Asia even before the coming of Islam. From their home in the region near today's Samarkand in Central Asia Sogdian merchants traveled across Eurasia. The Sogdians, a people of Iranian origin, were an important link in the commerce of the Silk Road between the fourth and ninth centuries CE. None of the letters ever reached their intended destintation. Stein discovered the letters in a mail bag that may have been confiscated en route from the Eastern Silk Road back to Sogdiana. east of Lou-lan, another important outpost on the southern branch of the silk route, which skirted the Taklamakan Desert. In 1907 British archaeologist Sir Aurel Stein discovered five nearly complete letters in a group of eight letters, written on paper, known as the Sogidan "Ancient Letters" in a Chinese watch tower just west of the Jade Gate, a fortified outpost guarding the western approaches to the administrative and cultural center of Dunhuang (at the western end of today's Gansu Province), some 90 km.
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