CHINA ARQUEOLOGIA golden-age-chinese-archayeolog

hindquarters raised — and their open wings and
grimacing mouths suggest that the beasts are ready
to spring at some imaginary attacker. Such creatures
are the fountainhead of a long tradition of
winged protecting beasts (bixie) placed inside or in
front of tombs. As part of a demonic iconography
that began to evolve during the Warring States
period, they may also have been associated with
immortality and travel through limitless space. LVF
to weigh down the mat on which the king was
seated. (Chairs came into common use in China
only during the tenth century CE.)
These beasts combine the features of several
animals — tigers, reptiles, and birds. 4 The ornamentation,
inlaid in gold and silver, serves in part to
accentuate the zoomorphic features; the exuberant
feather pattern on the wings is especially noteworthy.
Elsewhere, abstract spiral designs predominate; in
the center of the back, these spirals take the shape of
two symmetrical, curled, bird-headed animals.
Winged dragons and felines first occur in Chinese
art during the mid-fifth century BCE. Jessica
Rawson has suggested that they derive from the
Near East (see cat. 133); they may have reached
China by way of Iranian or Scythian intermediaries.
By the time of King Cuo, in any event, this iconography
was well established all throughout the area
of Zhou culture, and it would be erroneous to tie its
occurrence in this tomb to the "non-Chinese" identity
of the Zhongshan kings. In artistic terms, the
elegant, dynamic shape of these winged beasts is
light-years away from any known western Asian
prototypes, unmistakably indicating a Late Zhou
sensibility. The aggressive stance of the animals —
clawed feet spaced far apart, front lowered and
1 Excavated in 1978 (MI 0x136); published: Hebei 1979, pi. 3.1;
Tokyo 1981, no. 43; Li Xueqin 1986, 2: no. 108; Thorp i988b,
no. 63; Hayashi i988b: 295, fig. 3-297; Hebei 1995, cover,
1:139-141,143, fig. 51, and 2: color pi. 16.1, pi. 94.1; So 1995:
66, fig. 121.
2 The inscriptions on the four winged mythical beasts are as
follows: i. "Fourteenth ritual cycle, Official Treasury of the
Right, Petty Officer Guo Ying, Worker Jie, Weight." 2.
"Fourteenth ritual cycle, Official Treasury of the Right,
Petty Officer Guo Ying, Worker Jie." 3. "Fourteenth ritual
cycle, Official Treasury of the Left, Petty Officer Sun Gu,
Worker Xi, Weight." 4. "Fourteenth ritual cycle, Official
Treasury of the Left, Petty Officer Sun Gu, Worker Cai"
(Hebei 1995,1:413 and 414-415, figs. 171.3-6 and 172.1-2).
The same names also appear on various other objects
from King Cuo's tomb.
3 In spite of the excavators' assertions (Hebei 1995,1:404),
the treasuries mentioned in the inscriptions consequently
cannot be identical with the workshops in which these
items were manufactured.
4 Hayashi (i988b, 295) classifies them as "running dragons."
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