Silk Road sarcophagus 592 AD

All semester, the students have been reading about the Silk Road that linked Beijing to Istanbul via Central China, Xinjiang, Kazakhstan and Uzbekistan. We have examined the architecture of Islamic mosques, Buddhist temples, sculpted caves, markets and caravanserais. And we have tended to concentrate on the Chinese Yuan Dynasty (c1260-1368). This was when Mongolian leader Kublai Khan gained the title Great Khan by embracing Ch­inese culture and rebuilding Peking as his winter capital.

As with the best history, the accidental discovery in 1999 of a tomb in Taiyuan city, Shanxi province in NW China and the unearthing of a carved marble sar­cophagus changed minds. Historians now need to re­vis­it communication between China and the West, before the Tang Dynasty (618–906).

A fine description of the marble came from Caroline McDowall who noted that the sarchophagus was painted in gold, red and brown pigments, to house Yu Hong and his wife who were both interred there in 590s. While sharing a structure similar to many other tombs of the late C6th in north-central China, the carved and painted artwork on the marble sarcophagus' exterior showed no trace of Chinese motifs at all. Instead there were Persian and Buddhist scenes of hunting, feasting, music and domestic life.

The works depict either non-Chinese elements or mixed features of Chinese and foreign culture, be it heavily loaded pottery camels or porcelains with motifs of taming lions in a circus. Human figurines of Chinese or non-Chinese origin were shown relentlessly pursuing their long and lonely journey on the mysterious Silk Road.

DNA testing shows Yu Hong was Caucasian, and his wife was a mix of Asian and European. As a young man, he began his diplomatic career in West Asia, and was dispatched to China’s north in the mid C6th. Chinese was not his mother tongue. But where was he from? His epitaph suggests he came from a community of Turkic-speakers in Central Asia.

detail of Yu Hong’s sarcophagus, 
white marble,  592 AD
normally in the Shanxi Museum, China

Caroline McDowall noted that the sarcophagus looks like a typical Chinese building however a closer inspection of the crisply detailed scenes of banquets, entertainment and hunting, reveals the figures, carved or painted both on the interior and the exterior of all four sides of the stone structure, that do not look like the Han Chinese.

In fact the style and the iconographic themes on the sarcophagus are Buddhist, Sogdian in central Asia and Persian in western Asia. Reinforcing this finding is an absence of dragons but an abundance of camels, lions and elephants. Its pict­orial style evolved from a combination of features from Arabian, Persian, Indian, Turkish, Iranian and Roman origins, including hunters and fighters on camelback, on elephants, animals fighting and wine-making.

The Art Gallery of NSW has exhibited Silk Road Saga: the Sarcophagus of Yu Hong until November 2013. Co-organised with the Shanxi History Museum in central China’s Shanxi province, the 13 richly illustrated panels from the unearthed sarcophagus were displayed in parts so that all the exquisite details of its carved relief decorations could be revealed. While the sarcophagus itself was a major draw card because of its rarity and the fascination of scholars with its amazing iconography, another 16 other excavated objects are from burials of the same period in Shanxi province.

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We should have started our lectures in an earlier period. Yu Hong's tomb has shown historians the extent of cultural interaction along the Silk Road when people from the west were no strangers to ancient China's cities. Travelling the breadth of Asia, merchants moved their export wares regularly and their arrival at both ends of the Silk Road established a continuing link between the different cultures.

The Tang Dynasty (started 618 AD) enjoyed successful diplomatic relationships and economic expansion such that every merchant, soldier and monk wanted to travel the Silk Road and throng the streets of Chang’an, the capital. But Yu Hong (died 592 AD) was already dead by then.

The Silk Road Saga Exhibition will close at the Art Gallery of NSW on the 10th November 2013.