6,000 Years of Living

0 Comments | Insight on the News, Oct 18, 1999 | by Stephen Goode

The ancient world comes alive at the National Gallery of Art, where objects as old as 5000 B.C., including life-size figures, make up an amazing exhibition of Chinese archaeology.

Sometime around 433 B.C., the Marquis Yi of Zeng, a man in his early 40s when he died, was laid to rest in a lavish, four-chamber tomb. Beside him, each in her own coffin, were placed his eight concubines, ranging in age from 13 to 24. Beside him, too, was his favorite dog, also in its own coffin.

In the tomb's three other rooms, attendants placed Yi's finest musical instruments, clothing, ritual vessels and weapons for the noble's personal use in the afterlife. To protect him from evil spirits, they added striking bronze figures, one of them part crane, part antlered deer.

Altogether, Yi's four rooms contained 10 metric tons of bronze objects, more than any other known tomb in the ancient world. All of it lay hidden for more than 2,400 years, however; even Yi's name was lost to recorded history until September 1977, when his burial place was discovered and excavated.

Yi's tomb was an extraordinary find. The many objects, amazingly well-preserved, not only make ancient China more accessible but offer contemporary scholars (and museum goers) a glimpse of daily life in China 2,500 years ago. Indeed, the four chambers of the tomb had been arranged to suggest Yi's living quarters so as to make him comfortable in the afterlife.

Many of the objects are on display at the National Gallery of Art in Washington as part of a much larger exhibition -- more than 200 items altogether -- called "The Golden Age of Chinese Archeology: Celebrated Discoveries From the People's Republic of China." Most were excavated during the last two decades and cover an impressive 6,000-year span of history, from pottery dating to 5000 B.C. to highly sophisticated reliefs from about 920 A.D. Some, such as the ornately designed bronze bells from the fifth century B.C., are very large; others are very small.

Jade, the gemstone so closely associated with China, appeared relatively early -- a small jade crane dates from 1200 B.C., for example. A small hardstone tortoise, carved so its back is dark brown and its head and legs tan, dates from about the same period. There also are fantastic creatures: Dragons were quite popular subjects.

Surprisingly realistic is a painted lacquer deer from the Marquis of Yi's fifth century B.C. tomb. The animal's head, carved from a separate piece of wood, can be swiveled from side to side. The antlers are real deer antlers. Whoever the artist was, he had observed deer closely and precisely rendered what he saw.

But nothing prepares the viewer for the extraordinary realism of the terra-cotta figures from the burial complex of China's first emperor, Shihuangdi, who ruled between 246 and 210 B.C. Burial complex is the correct name: Discovered in 1974 and only partially excavated since, the site includes three pits that contain 7,000 life-size terra-cotta figures, including foot soldiers, archers and charioteers (along with their chariots and horses) intended to provide protection for Shihuangdi in the next world.

Only a few figures from this vast burial array accompany this exhibition, but they nonetheless offer a vivid impression of Shihuangdi's extraordinary tomb. Not surprisingly -- China at this time was a class-conscious society -- the highest officers of this terra-cotta army are rendered most precisely. But striking, too, is a kneeling archer (originally one of 160) wearing trousers, a double-layered tunic and a jacket of armor. Every particular, right down to the archer's hair, is meant to convey his real presence. Clearly, the artist's intention was to frighten any opponents his dead emperor might encounter in the next world.

A side note: Experts believe the terra-cotta warriors in the first emperor's burial complex may have been a substitute for the real thing. Two-and-a-half centuries earlier, Confucius had condemned as wasteful the slaughter of sacrificial victims to accompany a dead ruler in his tomb (like the Marquis of Yi's eight concubines, who were buried with him in 433), and the practice evidently had declined.

From the evidence provided by this exhibition, music played a central role in ancient Chinese life, at least among the nobility. As early as the fifth century B.C., the Chinese learned how to cast single bronze bells that could emit two tones, with an interval of a major or minor third, depending on how they were struck. Bells and musical instruments were found in the Marquis of Yi's tomb, and no tomb of a high-ranking Chinese noble or official was without some form of musical presence, elegant instruments or carefully rendered images of musicians.

The appearance of Buddhism in China in the first century A.D. brought new subjects to Chinese art: the figure of the Buddha himself and of bodhisattvas, beings whose perfection allows them to enter Nirvana, a glory they refuse in order to remain on Earth to help others gain enlightenment. But interest in music remained. One of the most exquisite pieces in this large show is a painted marble relief from the walls of the 10th-century tomb of Wang Chuzhi. The relief features an all-female orchestra of 12 musicians standing in two rows of six. There's a male conductor and two dancers (rendered much smaller than the figures in the orchestra). The women sway to the music they obviously relish -- you can almost hear them play.