Bronzes and Terra Cotta Soldiers

By A.T. Baker

At the Metropolitan Museum, a treasure trove from China

Six years ago, farmers digging a well in a cornfield near the Yellow River in China's Shaanxi province came upon a pottery figure. Subsequent organized digging uncovered an amazing archaeological find: a magnificent buried army of life-sized terra cotta soldiers, rank on rank, some 7,000 strong--charioteers behind chariots and horses, mounted cavalrymen, kneeling archers, thousands of spearmen, each individually sculptured and fully detailed. Scholars determined that the terra cotta army was commissioned by Qin Shihuangdi, the first Emperor of China, as a guard for his tomb, which lies nearly a mile to the west of the dig, under Mount Li.

Last week six of the warriors and two of the horses went on view at New York's Metropolitan Museum of Art as part of its newest exhibit, "Treasures from the Bronze Age of China," which will later go to Chicago, Fort Worth, Los Angeles and Boston. "Age" is the key word, since the terra cotta figures are obviously not bronze; chronologically, though, they do belong to the period, albeit its very end. The public will be grateful that the dramatic figures were included--even if they were not absolutely needed. For the show has bronzes enough to dazzle anyone. In fact, it is a far more impressive and selective exhibit than the one the People's Republic sent to the U.S. in 1974. Then, at a time when Washington had still not formally recognized the Peking regime, negotiations were conducted only at the top level of both governments, and the U.S. had to take what the Chinese chose to make available. This time the Met's own curators were invited to China and could discuss with their Chinese counterparts the choice and number of objects. Many of the items in the Met's show were discovered only in the past several years.

Among the 105 objects on display is a graceful three-legged wine cup from the Shang dynasty. Dating from about 1750 B.C., it is the earliest decorated bronze yet found, but its elegant shape and fine detail suggest that a sophisticated craftsmanship must have already existed for several centuries. During the Shang period, which lasted until 1030 B.C., bronze was so precious that it was strictly the prerogative of royalty, and even then used largely for sacramental rites honoring gods and ancestors. In fact, the vessels known as dings, which are characteristic of the time, were symbols of the divine right of rulership. The most prevalent Shang decoration was a mysterious beast whose eyes were always carefully articulated but whose body dissolved into indeterminate abstract swirls.

For the most part, Shang craftsmen from the area near the Yellow River tried to make their decorative designs blend with and enhance the vessel's shape. Artisans in more remote regions--Shang influence ranged over a geographical area the size of the whole eastern U.S. from Maine to Florida and inland as far as Ohio --were more adventurous, as shown in one vessel whose corners become rams' heads supported by thrusting foreshoulders and incised feet. Not content, the artist decorated the rams' haunches with crested birds, and set snakelike dragons coiling around the vessel's shoulder.

Some of the finest objects in the show come from the tomb of Fu Hao (circa 1300 B.C.), which was unearthed at Anyang only four years ago. A formidable woman, Fu Hao was the consort of the Emperor Wu Ding; on occasion, she led his armies into battle. Her tomb contained 200 bronze vessels, some 600 sculptures and ritual objects of jade and stone. Most charming among the bronzes is a pitcher in the shape of an owl; among the jades is a stylized crested bird with a sweeping tail that any art deco designer could be proud of.

Late in the 11th century, Shang rule was supplanted by the Zhou dynasty, and one of the museum's outstanding exhibits is a stolid bronze vessel whose inscription records that it was cast on the eighth day after the Zhou victory. The Met is still amazed that the Chinese agreed to let it leave the country. "It's like lending the original copy of the Declaration of Independence," says Assistant Curator Maxwell Hearn. Over the next eight centuries, Zhou craftsmen became increasingly uninhibited in adding figures to their vessels, as handles or simply as decoration. One massive vase is supported by eight crouching felines and topped by an insouciant and realistic crane with half-spread wings poised as if for takeoff. By the late 3rd century B.C., some artisans were dispensing with the traditional vessel forms entirely, as attested by a container fashioned in the shape of a rhinoceros. Its creator seized on the skin folds around the beast's neck to impose a bold, abstract pattern on a powerfully articulated form. From the tomb of Dou Wan, consort of the 2nd century Han prince Liu Sheng, comes the figure of a kneeling girl. The lamp she holds is pivoted so that light could be directed as her mistress might wish. Smoke from the candle within passes up through the girl's sleeve and on into the hollow body, so no soot would dirty the room. The girl's face is a paradigm of portraiture, her gaze at once attentive and suitably deferential.

Chinese archaeologists feel that they have only scratched the surface in the vast central area that was the core of the Middle Kingdom. Even for the Qin tomb, the newly unearthed army is just a beginning. The tomb, girdled by four miles of wall, lies under a 150-ft-high tumulus where excavation has yet to start. It may or may not be as rewarding as the dig for the warriors, who can thank grave robbers for their remarkable preservation. Only four years after the death of Shihuangdi, marauders made off with all the bronze weapons the soldiers carried, and set fire to the wooden roof that covered the long rows of the terra cotta army. The roof collapsed and buried the soldiers alive, as it were, much as Vesuvius' lava covered the citizens of Pompeii. The tomb may have been similarly looted -- it must have been an irresistible target. For the Emperor was no ordinary man; he planned no small plans. (Once, when a storm foiled a projected trip to Mount Xiang, he took revenge by ordering the mountain shorn of all its trees, and then painted red.) Once Shihuangdi had unified China's warring factions, he had his laborers connect many separated ramparts against the northern nomads to form the Great Wall.

He standardized weights and measures, and installed a common currency and written language. He began the construction of his tomb even before he had consolidated his conquests. The work took 36 years. According to a historian writing about a hundred years after Shihuangdi's death in 210 B.C., some 700,000 conscripts worked on the burial chamber, which they "filled with [models of] palaces, towers, and the hundred officials, as well as precious utensils and marvelous rarities. Artisans were ordered to install mechanically triggered crossbows set to shoot any intruder. With quicksilver, the various waterways of the empire, the Yangtze and Yellow rivers, and even the great ocean itself were created and made to flow and circulate mechanically."

What grave robber could resist a target like that? The tumulus is still there, looming above the flat plain, a beacon and a challenge for China's archaeologists, a possible trove of treasures out-dazzling even those on exhibit at the Met. --A. T. Baker

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