Western Han
Nanyue King's Mausoleum Museum, located on Jiefang Bei Road, Guangzhou,
is an awe-inspiring place with its exhibition of the elegant and sophisticated
artifacts excavated from a tomb of an ancient king in South China, and
one of the 80 famous museums in the world.
Western
Han Nanyue King's Mausoleum was originally 20 meters under Elephant Hill
and was discovered in 1983. It is the oldest and largest Han tomb with
the most funerary objects in Lingnan (South of the Nanling Mountain) Area.
The stone-chamber tomb is for its second ruler, Zhao Mei of Nanyue State
of the Western Han Dynasty (206 B.C.-24 A.D.). The museum, covering 14,000
square meters, has 10 exhibition halls exhibiting burial objects excavated
from the tomb.
The tomb
is 10.85 meter in length and 12.43 meters in the widest place, consisting
of the front and rear chambers. It is made up of 750 huge stones with colorful murals. Over 1,000 pieces
of cultural relics, bronze ware and terra cotta ware in particular, feature
the Yue Culture of south China(Nanyue Culture). Represented also are traces
of central Chinese culture, the Chu culture of south China, the Bashu
culture of southwest China, the Hun culture from the northern grassland,
and even foreign cultures.
The most
famous in the tomb is a silk-jade garment made up of 2,291 pieces of jade.
The garment with jade pieces connected by silk is the only one of its
kind in the world.
It shows the early development of jade garments as well as development
of the Nanyue culture.
In addition, a chariot,
gold silver vessels, musical instruments, and sacrificial human remains
are also found in the Western Han Nanyue King's Mausoleum.
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