Jump to content

User:Kimdramer/sandbox

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Dongjiazhuang is an Eastern Han tomb in Anqiu Count, Shandong Province.

In 1959, a tomb was discovered in Dongjiazhuang village, Anqiu country, in Shandong province. The tomb's construction and layout, as well as the copious and variously rendered carving of the decorative program, resembled that of the tomb M1 at Yi'nan discovered five years earlier. A salvage excavation of the Dongjiazhuang tomb was undertaken in 1960, when the site was threatened by the construction of a dam. The site report[1] was published in 1992. The book-size report contains black and white photos and line drawings keyed to scale drawings of the tomb plan. There is also a discussion of the excavation and the iconography of the decorative plan.

Like the tomb at Yi'nan, the tomb at Dongjiazhuang is a multi-chambered underground structure built on a level plane. It is constructed using a post and lintel technique and employing trapezoidal and rectangular limestone slabs. The cantilevered roof is supported with pillars.

The tomb is reached via a passage 14.3 meters long that slopes from the surface to a brick forecourt. The areas was blocked with brick and sealed with a large stone measuring 2.40 by 2.22 meters after the final closing of the tomb. Nevertheless, the tomb was robbed prior to archaeological excavation and tomb furnishings removed.

The entrance to the tomb is a double paneled door of limestone. Each panel is decorated with a centrally positioned door ring motif. The outer doors of the tomb and the doors to the brick forecourt are both crowned with tympanum adorned with images of recumbent deer carved in deep relief.

The three main chambers of the tomb at Donjiazhuang are laid out along a south-north axis, with the entrance to the tomb located on the south side of the structure. Of the 224 limestone slabs used in its construction, 103 are carved or incised to form a cohesive decorative program. The pillars and deeply carved with entwined figures evoking a local fertility cult. A variety of carving techniques points to different workshops. This admixture of styles and techniques is typical of stone carving in the Shandong-Jiangsu regions in the 170s, when stone carving workshops were at their height.

In the front chamber are chariot processions, figures of officials a scene of Confucius and Laozi, as well as Eighteen Confucian Disciples. In the central chamber are scenes of entertainment and homage. In the rear chamber is a landscape with recumbent deer and immortals.

Archaeologists were informed by a school principal that during the 1940s a stele near the tomb identified the tomb's main occupant as Sun Song, a native of Anqiu. This identification was confirmed by marshaling textual evidence including fanzhi or local gazetteers, the Hou Han shu and Sanguo Zhi (Records of the Three Kingdoms).

  1. ^ Zheng, Yan; Jia, Demin; Wang, Xiusde (1992). Anqiu Donjiazhuang Han huaxiangshu mu (A Han period carved stone tomb at Dongjiazhuang, Anqiu). Jinan chubanshe.