Page 412 - The Golden Age of Chinese Archaeology: Celebrated Discoveries from the People’s Republic of China

Excavation photograph of
the main chamber of the
King of Nanyue's tomb.

B U R I A L P R A C T I C E S A N D B E L I E F S
In the years since the discovery of the tombs of Liu Sheng and of the King of Nanyue, other
large and complex rock-cut tombs have been found — at Xuzhou in Jiangsu province (the capi-
tal of the Han kingdom of Chu), at Qufu in Shandong province (the kingdom of Lu), and at
Yongcheng in Henan province (the kingdom of Liang) — all of them far more complex than the
earlier finds. 2
In contrast to tombs of earlier periods, which were dug vertically into soft earth, especially
in the loess regions of the Yellow River, the magnificent Han tombs were laboriously tunneled

into rocky hillsides along a horizontal axis. Chambers associated with specific functions
branched off from the central passages. These tombs were not simple repositories; rather, they
were palaces for kings and princes in the afterlife, supplied with the utensils of daily life, often
in ceramic and lacquer, but also in gilded bronze, silver, and even gold. Objects that may have
been used for rites connected with the spirits — incense burners, lamps, mirrors, and braziers
— were also part of the tomb furnishings, but bronze ritual vessels for offerings to ancestors, so
abundant in tombs predating the Western Han period, do not appear to the same extent in the
rock-cut tombs.

411 | TOM B OF THE KIN G OF N A N Y U E