Into the Afterlife: Han and Six Dynasties Chinese Tomb Sculpture from the Schloss Collection

Warriors were a given in the tombs of the Chinese, keeping watch in the afterlife just as the individuals and battalions they were modelled after kept watch over state and empire. Armies and cavalries common in the tombs of the Han nobility, however, gave way during the early post-Han period to more modest keepers of the borders and peace of the underworld. Mingqi ('spirit objects'), including retinues of attendants and guardians, narrowed in scope and number, a change in funerary style that signaled less extravagant and ostentatious proclivities in general during this period of political division, internecine warfare and depressed economies. A good number of tombs have been excavated in which furnishings were reduced to ceramic models of a single well, stove and small granary, some storage containers and cooking vessels, a small number of barnyard animals, an ox and cart, a chimera and a cortege consisting of as few as three human figures, a male and female attendant and the present type of guardian-warrior.