Source: People's Daily Overseas Edition
Western Han Dynasty around the cardigan pottery dance figurines. Courtesy of Xuzhou Museum
Western Han "Liu Note" silver seal. Courtesy of Xuzhou Museum
Western Han gold buckle. Courtesy of Xuzhou Museum
Western Han S-shaped jade dragon. Courtesy of Xuzhou Museum
Eastern Han Dynasty glass chess pieces excavated from Tomb No. 2 of Tushan. Courtesy of Xuzhou Museum
Xuzhou, Jiangsu, known as Pengcheng in ancient times, has been a place of contention for soldiers since ancient times. Xiang Yu, the king of Western Chu, once took Pengcheng as his capital, and the hometown of Liu Bang, the ancestor of Han Gao, was also here. In 201 BC, Liu Bang deposed Han Xin, the king of Chu, and made his younger brother Liu Jiao the King of Chu, and built the capital at Pengcheng. During the Western Han Dynasty, there were 12 generations of Chu kings, during the Eastern Han Dynasty, there were 12 generations of Chu kings, and 5 generations of Pengcheng kings. The Xuzhou area is dotted with a number of tombs of han dynasty princes, and a large number of precious cultural relics excavated from these royal tombs are collected in the Xuzhou Museum.
Xuzhou Museum is composed of four parts: the exhibition building, the ruins of the Western Han Quarry, the tomb of the King of Han in Tushan, and the Qianlong Palace of the Qing Dynasty, and the basic exhibition includes "Gu Peng Qianqiu", "Han Meteorology", "Tiangong HanYu", "Han Family Fireworks", "Figurine Show Condensation" and "Jinge Iron Horse", which comprehensively display the rich and brilliant history and culture of Xuzhou, especially the Han culture as a distinctive feature.
Golden jade treasures
Many of the famous treasures of the Xuzhou Museum come from the tomb of the Chu king in Lion Mountain, and according to research, the owner of the tomb may be the second generation of The Chu king Liu Ying (guest). The whole mausoleum is large in scale, including the three peaks of Lion Mountain, Sheep Ghost Mountain and Hydrangea Mountain, in addition to the tombs of the King and Queen of Chu, there are also a large number of funerary pits, funerary tombs, mausoleum building sites and so on. The tomb of the King of Chu is located in Lion Mountain, and although it has been excavated in ancient times, nearly 2,000 pieces (sets) of cultural relics have been excavated, the most famous of which is the golden jade coat.
Jade clothing is a corpse utensil worn by the emperors and high-ranking nobles of the Han Dynasty after their deaths, and the jade pieces are connected with metal wire or silk thread, also known as "jade garnet" and "jade box". The excavated jade clothing data show that most of the jade clothes of the princes and princes of the Western Han Dynasty were gold wisps, but there were also those who used silver wisps, copper wisps and silk wisps. During the Eastern Han Dynasty, there was a stricter difference in rank, and from archaeological excavations, the princes and princes of the Eastern Han Dynasty did not use golden jade robes, but used silver wisps, copper wisps or gilded copper wisps, which coincided with the relevant records in the Book of Later Han.
When the golden jade robes of the tomb of the Chu King of Lion Mountain were unearthed, they were seriously scattered, and the stolen tomb robbers were dragged from the coffin to the stone and extracted the gold wire. There are more than 4,000 pieces of jade clothing excavated, the jade is warm and moist, the surface has been polished and polished; the size is relatively small, the largest is less than 9 square centimeters, the smallest is less than 1 square centimeter, and some are only 1 mm thick; the shapes are diverse, including squares, rectangles, half-moon shapes, triangles, etc. In 2001, the Xuzhou Museum restored the golden jade clothes. The restored jade coat is composed of more than ten parts such as the hood, front chest, back, left and right sleeves, left and right trouser tubes, etc., with a total of 4248 pieces of jade pieces, and the gold wire used to wear jade pieces weighs 1576 grams. This golden jade coat is the earliest unearthed in China, the largest number of jade pieces, the best jade quality, and the most exquisite production process.
In addition to jade clothes, Lion Rock has also unearthed a variety of exquisite jade objects, including jade ge, jade bi, jade pendant, jade huang, jade cup, jade belt hook, etc., reflecting the superb jade-making process of the Han Dynasty. A dragon-shaped jade pendant in the display cabinet is quite eye-catching. It is carved from Hetian jade, which is lustrous and smooth. The dragon is curled in an S-shape, with open whiskers and teeth, round eyes, mane curled to both sides, a circle of twisted silk lines carved into the neck, forelimbs tortuous, the dragon's tail rolled up and flattened, and the whole body is decorated with swirls. This jade dragon inherits the carving style of the Warring States Jade Dragon, which is very close to the jade dragon style excavated in the late warring states tomb of Yang Gong of Changfeng, Anhui, and a similar jade dragon has also been found in the tomb of the Nanyue King in Guangzhou. This S-shaped jade dragon is mostly found in the tombs of princes in the early Western Han Dynasty, and the jade dragon of this period focuses on the strength and momentum of the dragon, which is different from the meek and quiet artistic style of the dragon after the middle of the Western Han Dynasty.
The gold buckle is also a prestigious treasure of xuzhou museum. On the west side of the tomb road outside the tomb of King Chu, two identical forms of gold buckle inlaid shell belts were excavated, the two ends of the belt were pure gold belt buckles, and the middle was a ribbon made of three rows of sea shells, and the sea shells were embellished with several gold pieces. The thickness and weight of the two buckles are different, and the dimensions and ornaments are basically the same. The pair of gold buckles in front of you consists of two rectangular gold belt plates and a gold buckle tongue. Bas-relief on the front of the strip plate is a picture of a beast biting bucket, and the animal figure is majestic and powerful, surrounded by a beaked bird head pattern. It is surrounded by a raised border with two transverse double ring buttons in the middle, each with a small hole in the inner lower corner of the strip plate that is slightly near the triangle, so that the tongue can penetrate. The clasp tongue is shaped like a bird's tongue and has a perforation at the back.
The gold buckle belt is a belt commonly used by the nomadic people of the northern steppe, and because of its magnificence and exquisiteness, it was respected by the nobles of the Han Dynasty. The gold buckle excavated from the tomb of the Chu King of Lion Mountain is the most gorgeous and most advanced knotted buckle seen in the Han Dynasty, although the theme of the ornament is the grassland beast fighting, but from the casting process and knotting method, it should be a Central Plains product.
Terracotta figurines
The Han Dynasty was very popular with funerary figurines, and xuzhou unearthed more than 6,000 Han Dynasty pottery figurines, which was the area with the largest number of pottery figurines found in addition to the capital Chang'an during the two Han Dynasties. The Xuzhou Museum has a large collection of Han Dynasty pottery figurines, many of which are rare in China, which are rich in variety and lively in form, reflecting the court life at that time.
The tomb of King Chu of Beidongshan unearthed 151 pieces of painted pottery figurines, with bright colors and vivid costume details, which greatly enriched the early Han Dynasty costume materials. In the exhibition cabinet, there are 4 pieces of pottery figurines wearing hats, purple hats with sauce on their heads, wearing double right-sided koji deep coats and fat hakamas, with thin eyebrows and long eyebrows on their faces, and different styles of figure-eight beards, with different looks. He wears a long sword or a ring knife on his chest, a belt around his waist and a strap and a ribbon hanging from his belt, and his hands are half-clenched in fists to hold weapons. Some of the figurines have the word "Langzhong" on the rectangles tied to the ribbons. Langzhong is the corridor, and the corridor refers to the corridor of the court, according to which it is inferred that these painted figurines should be the attendants of the King of Chu.
Another set of painted back arrow clay figurines also comes from the tomb of king Chu of Beidongshan. A total of 64 such figurines were unearthed, all wearing hats, long swords, and carrying arrows. The arrow is held in place by three straps under the armpits and left shoulder, knotted around the chest for easy carrying and running. The pottery figurines have their hands half-clenched on the sides of the waist, the left hand is slightly higher than the right hand, and the palm is downward, making a holding object, possibly holding a bow in both hands. Some clay figurines also have the words "Lang Zhong" or "Zhonglang" on the right crotch of the clay figurines.
With a graceful posture and long sleeves, a group of painted dance figurines excavated from the tomb of king Chu of Lanshan in the exhibition hall makes people stop. Dressed in a robe with a right-sided dragging robe, the upper body leans forward, the left arm naturally hangs on the side of the body, the right arm is raised high, and the long sleeves hang like a waterfall. The face of the pottery dance figurines around the cardigan is beautiful, the body is S-shaped with the change of dance steps, the arms are raised, and there is a "five" engraved on the front and back of the left and right upper arms, and the sleeves are thrown from the air to the back, full of movement. From the stylistic point of view, the dance figurines should be the long-sleeved bending waist dance that was popular at that time. The tomb of King Chu of Beidongshan has also unearthed 20 similar dance figurines, and the elbow of the arm is also engraved with the word "five", and the strokes are filled with red color. Such a tunic pottery dance figurine has not been unearthed in other regions, and is an important physical material for understanding the early dance styles of the Western Han Dynasty. In addition to the moving dancing figurines, there are also realistic musical figurines such as fuser figurines, rock striking figurines, and blowing figurines, which reproduce the scene of luan song and phoenix dancing in the Chu King's Palace.
Explore the earth mountain
On the north side of the Xuzhou Museum, there is an earthen mountain containing 3 Eastern Han tombs. Tomb One is smaller, and Tomb Three may be an abandoned tomb. Tomb No. 2 lasted more than 40 years from its discovery in 1977 to the completion of excavation in 2020, and was rated as "Top Ten New Archaeological Discoveries in China in 2020".
Tomb No. 2 of Tushan is large in scale and complex in structure, and the owner of the tomb is the King of Chu or The King of Pengcheng in the Eastern Han Dynasty, and the specific identity is still disputed. The tomb has a circular seal of about 16 meters high and a diameter of nearly 100 meters at the bottom. The reporter saw at the scene that Tomb No. 2 used indoor uncovered excavations, and the soil and stones above the tomb were cleaned up layer by layer from top to bottom until they were exposed to the bottom of the tomb.
According to historical records, Jia Hu in the Yuan Dynasty once built a grass hut on a tushan mountain and spent 20 years excavating this tomb. Geng Jianjun, director of the Archaeology Department of Xuzhou Museum, told reporters that what was seen in archaeological excavations was basically consistent with the historical records of the tomb robbery, the robbery cave was located in the northwest corner of the tomb sealing soil, and the jade cloth fragments, lacquered wood, bronze ware, etc. were cleared out of the cave, and the funerary items in the tomb were also displaced.
More than 4,500 pieces of sealed mud were found in the sealed soil of Tomb No. 2 of Tushan, mainly the seal mud of the officials of the Western Han Dynasty, as well as the private seal mud and the sealed mud without seal. Where did the huge amount of Western Han sealing mud come from, and why did it appear in the tombs of the Eastern Han Kings? Geng Jianjun speculated that perhaps the waste of the Chu Palace was piled up in the mud and later dug up as the tomb sealing soil.
The tomb is composed of ear chambers, Yongdao, front chambers, back chambers and cloisters, and different funerary items are placed according to functional distinctions, and more than 350 pieces of pottery, jade, copper and iron artifacts and other cultural relics have been unearthed. The back room is a coffin chamber, the middle is a stone coffin bed, two lacquered wooden coffins are juxtaposed from the east and west, and fragments of silver jade clothes and gilded copper jade clothes have also been unearthed, which can be determined as husband and wife burials combined with the results of human bone identification. A person is buried in the East Cloister, using a single-layer catalpa lacquered coffin. Inside the coffin, archaeologists found a cluster of uniformly shaped blue-green oval glass beads, shaped like lotus seeds, about 76 pieces, which were later confirmed to be early Go. In the antechamber, two four-legged stone cases were placed, one of which was covered with silk silk fabric with 17 ink lines in each direction, and 88 oval brass beads were also found, which should be a Go board and a Go piece. Brass chess pieces and glass chess pieces are the same size, confirming that the two sides of the Han Dynasty game are distinguished by the texture and color of the pieces.
"In the future, an archaeological museum will be built here, allowing the audience to experience the archaeological excavation site up close, and some public education courses related to archaeology will be added." Li Xiaojun, director of Xuzhou Museum, told reporters, "This year, Xuzhou Museum will upgrade some exhibition halls to improve the level of cultural relics protection and visiting experience. In addition, on the basis of the establishment of the 'Huaihai Economic Zone Museum Alliance' in 2020, we will further promote the coordinated development of museums in 4 provinces and 10 cities in Sulu, Yuwan and Anhui, and launch a number of academic and scientific research achievements. ”