Large bronze mask. Photo by Jiang Cong, State Administration of Cultural Heritage
On the night of Chinese New Year's Eve, the bronze masks of cultural relics excavated from the Sanxingdui site appeared on the stage of the Spring Festival Gala of the Year of the Tiger, reproducing the ancient Shu style of "sleeping for thousands of years and waking up to shock the world".
According to reports, the bronze mask is 131cm wide, 71cm high, 66cm deep, and weighs 131 kilograms, which is the largest and well-preserved large bronze mask known to have been excavated from the Sanxingdui site. Its wide forehead, angular edges, smooth eyebrows, eyes, lips and other lines, all protruding from the face, thick and long eyebrows as a raised shape, the two sides of the mask up and down and in the front of the forehead in the square perforation, may be used for fixed purposes. The bronze mask is a typical artifact of the Sanxingdui culture, dating back more than 3,000 years, reflecting the understanding and thinking of the ancient Shu ancestors on the natural things and the world of gods and gods.
Since December 2019, under the guidance and support of the State Administration of Cultural Heritage, the Sichuan Provincial Bureau of Cultural Relics has organized the Sichuan Provincial Institute of Cultural Relics and Archaeology and other units to discover six new "sacrifice pits" in the area where the first and second "sacrifice pits" are located, numbered from three to eight pits.
At the beginning of 2021, archaeologists began excavations of the third "sacrificial pit". By 30 January, more complete bronzes began to be revealed. On March 16, the buried cultural relics in the pit were fully presented, including bronze, jade, gold, ivory and other precious cultural relics. Located in the south-central part of Pit 3, the Large Bronze Mask is the earliest emerging bronze artifact, which is particularly striking.
The moment the large bronze mask is extracted from the pit. Photo courtesy of Yu Jia, State Administration of Cultural Heritage
On June 23, 2021, the mask was extracted from the pit. Archaeologists and cultural relics conservators analyzed and studied the casting process of the bronze mask and believed that its production was first cast and formed, cast by the face, the back of the cheek, the eyes, the ears and other parts, and then combined into one, and the right eye of the large mask was also found to have silk fabric residues of warp and weft tissues.
Archaeologists are cleaning up sea shells inside the nasal cavity. Photo courtesy of Yu Jia, State Administration of Cultural Heritage
By the end of 2021, Sanxingdui has only discovered six new sacrifice pits with a total of more than 10,000 pieces of numbered cultural relics, including gold masks, top statues, round square figures, large masks, altar models, kneeling bronze figures, more than 500 ivory and many other exquisite cultural relics, some of which can be viewed at close range in the Sanxingdui Open Cultural Relics Restoration Museum. Many cultural relics such as Tongzun, Tongzun, Yuzhang, and Yuqun show the close connection between Shudi and the culture of the Central Plains and the middle and lower reaches of the Yangtze River, and empirically demonstrate the historical development process of the pluralism and integration of Chinese civilization.
Source: People's Daily News