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●Tiancheng Municipal Office for the Preservation of Cultural Relics

Tiancheng Municipal Museum

Excavation of Tomb M27 of the Western Han in Sanjiaowei, Tiancheng, Anhui (17)

In the year 2002, a rescue excavation was conducted on tomb M27 in Sanjiaowei northeast of Tiancheng City in Anhui Province. M27 is a vertical-pit tomb with a wooden tomb chamber (guo) and a coffin (guan). Most of the funeral objects were placed in the coffin and the compartment of the tomb chamber including pottery, bronzes, and agate wares. This tomb belongs to the Sanjiaowei cemetery of the Western Han. Judging by the structure of the tomb and the funeral objects, the date of M27 is the end of the middle period of the Western Han.

 

 

●Shanxi Provincial Institute of Archaeology

Shanxi Museum

Shuozhou Municipal Deparment of Cultural Heritage

Chongfu Temple Cultural Relics Administration

A Mural-Painted Tomb of the Northern Qi in Shuiquanliang, Shanxi (26)

From June to August, 2008, a collaborative archaeological team excavated a mural-painted tomb in Shuiquanliang Village, Shouzhou City, Shanxi Province. The tomb is situated about 1.5 km west of the village. In the tomb, funeral objects such as pottery figures, pottery models, and glazed pottery were found, as well as many well-preserved murals. The tomb structure, murals, and burial objects suggest that the tomb was built in the late Northern Qi; the occupant of the tomb may have been the military commanders of Shuozhou City. This excavation is very important for the study of the history and culture of Shuozhou City in the Northern Qi period.

 

 

●Linmeicun

On the Ming Landscape Painting Concerning Matteo Ricci in Liaoning Museum (66)

The painting “Rustic Hut and level” is a blue-and-green landscape screen of the middle Ming dynasty, executed with a perspective system borrowed from Western painting. It had been held in the imperial storehouses of the Forbidden City, but was dispersed into private hands at the end of the Qing dynasty, and is now in the collection of the Liaoning Provincial Museum. In this article, the author points out that the silver-ingot-shaped wooden bridge in the painting must be the Yinding (Silver Ingot) Bridge in Shichahai in Beijing, and the buildings on the southeast river bank must therefore be the outbuildings of the Haiyin Temple. The landscape in this painting is not merely wild land on the outskirts of Beijing, but depicts the most beautiful of the eight famous views of old Yanjing city- the “View of Mountains from the Yinding Bridge”. Although the painting has an inscription from the hand of Matteo Ricci, the Italian Jesuit missionary was not the painter. Rather, it was the Chinese Christian painter Ni Yagu, who was trained in painting techniques of both East and West. Matteo Ricci inscribed the painting and offered it to the Wanli Emperor, which explains how it came to be held in the imperial collections.

 

 

●Yang Hongxun

A study of the Ceremonial Buildings Ming Tang and Kun Lun in the Ancient Shu State (80)