Tang Dynasty's tomb found in NW China county

Local archeologists said Wednesday that they had discovered a tomb of an ancient army general in Heshui County of northwestern China's Gansu Province.

The tomb of General Wei Zhe dating back to the Tang Dynasty (618-907 A.D.) was discovered by a villager at Xiaoju Township when digging the foundations for a residential building.

Experts from the provincial research institute of cultural relics and archeology and the county's cultural relics authority had jointly excavated the tomb.

They found the coffin chamber of the tomb was 16 square meters in size, and the chamber was 3.54 meters high. There were 14 frescos on the four walls of the chamber.

According to Jia Yanlian, curator of the county's museum, the archeologists found a memorial tablet with an inscription, ceramic vases, colored terracotta figures, bronze mirrors, colored glaze ware and silver hairpins inside the tomb.

Jia said the findings were valuable for studying the politics, economy, culture, military arrangements and burial customs of the Tang Dynasty.