Chinese Terracotta Army

Thursday, October 14, 2010 Yesterday Don and I both took off from work in the afternoon and went to the Museum of Eastern Art here in Stockholm. They opened an exhibit there a few weeks ago based on the Terracotta Army found in China, buried with the First Emperor of the Qin (Chin) Dynasty, the first leader who united what had been warring tribes, into the earliest version of China (the first few hundred years, B.C.). There were about 4000 larger-than-life terracotta statues, originally brightly painted, very life-like, who made up, together, a garrison of foot soldiers, archers, horse-mounted officers, and charioteers. Archeologists are still excavating all the grave goods in and near this burial mound. This Emperor’s rule only lasted 15 years before the tribal groups and aristocracy under him revolted under his demanding rule (conscription into a 600,000-man army, half a million more slaves working only to glorify him and his wife and concubines when they were dead, and of course the taxes and food requirements to fund his extravagant way of life and of death.

The next Dynasty, the Han, was then founded, and continued the practice of burying the emperors with full-size armies, models of palaces, complete palace households full of acrobats, musicians, servants, craftsmen, models of livestock (pigs, goats, oxen, dogs), and also thousands of skeletons of real slaves (their chains and bonds were still attached to their bones), who were, archeologists believe, murdered en masse after they had built their emperors’ grave mound and artifacts. All of this reflected their basic spiritual belief system, “as below, so above;” they believed that the afterlife would look exactly as it did here on earth, and so the Emperor needed a full palace retinue to continue his lifestyle, PLUS he needed a full army to defend him and his household from his enemies whom he had conquered. Why the real live servants were killed they have no clue. Interestingly, these models of palaces, along with their full terracotta armies and households, each had literally hundreds of thousands of artisans involved in their manufacture and upkeep. The above-ground temples that were erected to actually guard the below-ground complexes, also involved real human communities of hundreds of thousands. These temple complexes were larger in population than the towns nearby that did NOT have burials beneath them.

The Qin and Han emperors’ burial mounds (they are HUGE, like large real hills) and nearby burials of real and fake humans, etc, have only been partially excavated (maybe 10% excavated). So there are many more artifacts and army and other figures to be found. For now, one major difference between the two empires is that although the Han Dynasty’s burial mounds contain many thousands more figures, those figures are much smaller (maybe 2 feet tall humans) than those of the Qin Dynasty.

The exhibit here in Stockholm contains, of course, a very small selection of the artifacts and human figures (dozens of the smaller Han models of humans, maybe 8 or so of the larger-than-life Qin soldiers). Also in the exhibit were beautiful objects from the model palaces, architectural bits and pieces from them, and some jade spiritual items, including these gorgeous disks with openings in the center. These jade discs began to be used in burials and in religious rituals in China during the Neolithic era, meaning a few thousand years B.C., and were passed down through families for hundreds and possibly thousands of years. Here is the most beautiful one they have ever found, which was from the Han dynasty burials. IN front of the disc (which has a jade cup alongside it) are numerous bronze and clay lamps (including a great ram-shaped lamp, in front of the disk, and a number of incense burners. The larger bits are architectural details.

Here is the entrance to the cave that the Chinese Terracotta Army Exhibit was displayed in, underneath the Museum of Eastern Art in Stockholm. The caves were built for the Swedish Naval Command during World War II; this is the first time they have been used for an exhibit. The building above is the church for the Navy. The church, caves, and museum are on the island of Skeppsholmen, which is home to many, many old, beautiful boats, too.