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Jade double-bi disk with spiral design
l
(
Height 7.6 (4 7s), width 12.4 (3), depth 0.4 /<)
Western Han Dynasty, second century BCE
From the tomb of the King of Nanyue at Xianggang,
Guangzhou, Guangdong Province
The Museum of the Western Han Tomb of the
Nanyue King, Guangzhou, Guangdong Province

Composed of two conjoined bi disks, this jade is
1
decorated on both sides with relief spirals; an
incised line borders the inner and outer edges of
these relief patterns. Complex scroll designs fill
the V-shaped interstices at the juncture of the disks
and are detailed with slight points of relief where
they curl on themselves. The jade seems originally
to have been an olive green color, now transformed
into a mottled rust-red and paler buff surface.
A more primitive form of a double disk has been
2
found at Zhaojiahu, Danyang, but it is uncertain
whether these examples are related, and this un-
usual piece is otherwise unprecedented. The object
seems to have been attached to the feet of the King
of Nanyue's jade shroud (cat. 139), perhaps to hold
them together, and would thus have paralleled
the single disk that lay at the head of the shroud.
No similar conjoined disks have been found in
other tombs that contain jade shrouds; their rarity
in burial finds may be attributable to the fact that
many of these tombs have been robbed. JR

1 Excavated in 1983 (D 186); reported: Guangzhou 1991,
1:183-184,190, fig. 121:1.
2 See Pruch 1998, 246.

41/ I TOMB OF THE KING OF NANYU E