Page 426 - The Golden Age of Chinese Archaeology: Celebrated Discoveries from the People’s Republic of China

a number of ingenious ways: a pendant found at
Anhui Changfeng Yanggang incorporates outward-
facing dragons at both ends into the design.
The carving seen here is a later form of the
Anhui example. Two dragons, with broad rounded
chests and feline legs, face each other aggressively,
separated by a pointed projection on which is
carved a rudimentary face. Each advances one paw
to the center and raises the other behind its back
as if poised to attack. Their jaws are open, and the
creatures have small ears and crestlike extensions
at the back of their heads. That the outward-facing
position conventionally depicted in animal-head
huang pendants is here reversed does not conceal
the ornament's close relation to its predecessors:
Like many earlier jades, it has a relief pattern on it,
in this instance small raised scrolls joined by inter-
linked spirals, a form characteristic of the second
century BCE.
Seven pendant sets were found in the eastern
H5 chamber of the king's tomb, along with the bodies
Jade pei ornament in the shape of a double- of four women. This magnificent ornament seems
headed dragon to have been the topmost item in a complex pen-
dant set found lying to the east of the coffin of the
3
Height 6 (2 /s), width 10.2 (4'A)
woman called "the Lady on the Right." Together
Western Han Dynasty, second century BCE
with this piece, the assemblage comprised five
From the tomb of the King of Nanyue at Xianggang,
other huang, a disk with three birds carved along
Guangzhou, Guangdong Province
the outer rim, and two rings incised with spiral
The Museum of the Western Han Tomb of the grooves. The loop of this huang is pieced along the
Nanyue King, Guangzhou, Guandong Province top with three holes, so that the assembled pen-
dant, fixed to an attachment, could hang from
1
This beautifully carved ornament is a Han period the neck or from the waist. Texts such as the Li ji
transformation of a conventional type of pendant (Record of ritual) describe pendants hanging from
known as a huang. The basic form, which appears the waist, but, given its length, it is more likely that
as early as the Neolithic period, is an arc-shaped a complex assemblage like this example would have
section of a circle, and it occurs in many variants, hung from the neck over the chest. JR
especially along the east coast of China and during
the Shang and Western Zhou periods. During the 1 Excavated in 1983 (E 143-9); reported: Guangzhou 1991,
1:240-241, fig. 163:1.
Early Eastern Zhou period, huang were decorated 2 Rawson 1995, 259 - 266, fig. 2 and no. 17:4.
with animal heads at each end (several such exam-
ples have been found in the tombs of the Huang
2
state in southern Henan province), and this cate-
gory of pendants appears in various Chinese states
throughout the Eastern Zhou period. During the
third century BCE, the heads were transformed in

425 TOM B OF THE KING OF N A N Y U E