The eighteen treasures of the Nanjing Museum have a silver jade coat. The silver jade coat is 170 cm long, and the shape is almost exactly the same as that of the human body from the appearance. The jade coat is divided into fourteen parts: hood, face cover, front chest, back, left and right sleeves, left and right gloves, left and right thumbs, left and right pants, and left and right shoes. Each of its parts is an individual separated from each other, and the periphery of each part has a silk fabric embellishment to make each part fixed, easy to combine, and also increase the beauty of the jade coat. The whole jade coat shares more than 2600 pieces of jade, and the silver wire woven with jade clothes weighs about 800 grams.
The jade coat also includes nine plugs such as eye covers, nose plugs, earplugs and mouth plugs, in order to prevent the leakage of the essence of the human body. The jade head consists of a hood and a face cover. The eyes are olive-shaped and the lower palate is half-moon-shaped. The nose is composed of 15 small strips of trapezoidal jade and a semicircular jade piece to show a realistic image of the human face; The gloves and thumb sleeves are all four-fingered fist-shaped, while the thumb sleeves of the left and right hands are different in length, one is 8.5 cm long and the other is 8 cm long; the part of the shoe is made of round-toed flat-soled high-top shoes, which are obviously divided into left and right feet.
Silver jade cloth was excavated in 1969 in Xuzhou Tushan No. 1 Han Tomb, from the tomb structure, the tomb is built of yellow intestine stone structure, which is the burial system of emperors or princes of the Han Dynasty. It is explained that the owner of the tomb must belong to the rank of princes and kings, and there is an inscription on the yellow intestine stone: "Fourteen Years of Official Provinces". The princes and princes of the Han Dynasty can use a special chronology method, that is, to crown the word "official" in front of the numbers; in addition, there are many burials in the tomb, which are exquisitely made, among which another treasure of the town courtyard of Nanbo, the gilded beast-shaped copper box, is also from this tomb, which shows that this tomb is extraordinary.
The jade garment was a burial garment worn by the emperors, princes and high-ranking nobles of the Han Dynasty after their deaths, and appeared roughly in the Wenjing period. However, in the Western Han Dynasty, a strict hierarchical system had not yet been formed, so the jade clothes of the princes of the Western Han Dynasty that had been discovered were both gold wisps, silver wisps and silk wisps. In the Eastern Han Dynasty, a strict jade robe hierarchy was implemented, and only the emperor was eligible to wear gold jade clothes when he died, while the princes could only wear silver jade clothes when they died, and ordinary nobles and princesses could only wear copper jade clothes.
In 1968, garrisons in Mancheng County, Hebei Province, discovered a Western Han tomb while bombing the mountain. The owner of the tomb is the tomb of Liu Sheng, the King of Zhongshan Jing, and his wife Dou Xie, and archaeologists have unearthed 2 complete "golden jade clothes" from the tomb, after which the appearance of the jade clothes is truly presented in later generations.
The production of jade clothes is a very difficult process. The craftsmen first selected a large amount of jade and processed the jade into jade pieces, which needed to be designed into different sizes and shapes according to different parts of the human body. Then the jade pieces are grinded and polished one by one, and then small holes are put on each corner of the jade pieces, and some small holes are only one millimeter in diameter. The gold wire and silver thread embellished with jade pieces are made of extremely fine gold and silver wire, which is both soft and has a certain strength. Finally, the jade pieces are embellished with silver thread and made into jade clothes according to the shape of the human body. The manpower and material resources involved in making a set of silver jade robes are astonishing.
Liu Sheng's golden jade clothes
So which prince of the Han Dynasty did this silver jade robe belong to? Experts speculate that from the perspective of the tomb system, the princes of the Western Han Dynasty also usually used golden jade clothes, while the Eastern Han Dynasty had a strict system and could only use silver jade clothes. Therefore, it is possible to focus time on the Eastern Han Dynasty. During the Eastern Han Dynasty, Xuzhou was called Pengcheng, and it was the capital of the Chu state and the Pengcheng state successively. There were four princes who reigned for more than 14 years, namely, Liu Ying, the king of the State of Chu, Liu Gong the Prince of Jing, Liu Dao, the King of Kao, and Liu He, the Prince of Filial Piety. Due to the deposing of Liu He, the prince of filial piety, it was impossible to enjoy such a heavy ceremony when he died. Therefore, the owner of this tomb may be one of Liu Ying, Liu Gong, and Liu Dao.
During the two Han Dynasties, the ruling class paid attention to health care and death, and things died as if they were alive, in addition to creating a luxurious burial room, it was to make a large number of funerary products. The emergence and popularity of jade clothes is related to the Confucian idea of 'precious jade' in the Han Dynasty, and is closely related to the socio-economic development of that time and the changes in funeral concepts. First of all, the ancients believed that "jade has virtue" and believed that jade has eleven virtues such as benevolence, wisdom, righteousness, etiquette, music, loyalty, faith, heaven, earth, virtue, and Tao. Etiquette? Yuzao Yun: "The ancient gentleman will wear jade, the gentleman has no reason, the jade does not go to the body, the gentleman is in the jade bid." "Jade" represents "gentleman's personality" in pre-Qin Confucian scholarship and has multiple aesthetic values. In the Han Dynasty, the nobles of the imperial palace developed from the jade pendant before they died to the use of jade as a burial dress after death.
At the beginning of the establishment of the Western Han Dynasty, the world was initially determined, a hundred wastes were waiting to be revived, Liu Bang, the ancestor of Han Gao, tried his best to restore the social economy, and after several decades of recuperation and recuperation of the "rule of Wenjing", when emperor Wu of the Han Dynasty arrived, the economy had developed greatly and the national strength was enhanced. The Book of Equalization records a scene in the world of wealth at that time: "The money of the Kyoshi is huge, and it is decaying and unschoolable. Taicang's millet Chen Chen Xiangyin, overflowing with dew, is so corrupt that it is inedible. As a result, the rulers of the Han Dynasty began to breed the custom of extravagant and generous burial.
Similar to the ancient Egyptian concept, the Han Dynasty also believed that the soul is immortal after death, so "serving death is like serving life". As a burial jade, the jade robe that best shows the identity and rank of the tomb owner appeared in the context of this thick burial wind. The rulers of the Han Dynasty even believed that jade clothes had a peculiar effect, which could protect the bones from immortality. In the Jin Dynasty, Ge Hong wrote "Baopuzi" Yun: "If the gold and jade are in the Nine Tricks, the dead are immortal"; Li Shizhen of the Ming Dynasty also believed that "jade may not be able to make the living immortal, but make the dead immortal". This idea has been proved impossible in today's scientific development, and the ancients were convinced of it.
During the Three Kingdoms period, the Wei Emperor Cao Pi saw the miserable scene of the Tombs of the Han Dynasty being stolen and excavated, and the bones were abandoned in the wilderness, and Cao Pi believed that the use of jade clothes was "foolish", so in 222 AD he ordered the abolition of the system of burial with jade clothes. At this point, the jade cloth burial system finally withdrew from history, and it was no longer recorded in the history books and unearthed in the tombs of later generations.
According to the statistics of Mr. You Zhenyao's "Eastern Han Dynasty Silver Jade Clothing" article published in the "Treasure Records of the Nanjing Museum" published in 1992, at present, among the cultural relics unearthed nationwide, more than 8 pieces of jade with more than 2,000 pieces of jade pieces are unearthed, and this one of Nanbo is the first silver jade coat to be restored completely.