China restores dainty headgear of ancient princess
(Xinhua)
Updated: 2010-02-09 11:07
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XI'AN: Chinese archeologists have restored a dainty headgear unearthed from the tomb of a princess who lived about 1,200 years ago in today's northwestern Shaanxi Province.
"We found through lab work that the headgear consisted nearly 400 tiny pieces of turquoise, amber, carnelian, pearl, ruby, gold, silver and several other types of precious metal," said Yang Junchang, chief engineer of Shaanxi Provincial Institute of Archeology.
Yang led a team of Chinese and German specialists to restore the headgear, a project that last for 18 months and was concluded early this year.
While lab work helped scientists find out the quality of the material, Yang and his colleagues also used their imagination to figure out what the headgear was really like.
"The strings that connected the tiny pieces of adornment had long decayed when the headgear was unearthed," said Yang. "So we took the headgear along with a huge block of loess back to the lab to extract pieces of adornment under a microscope."
The headgear, 800 grams in weight and 42 centimeters tall, was excavated in 2002 when a new campus of Xi'an University of Technology was being built in the southeast of the provincial capital Xi'an.
The epitaph unearthed from the tomb where the headgear was found suggested it belonged to a princess named Li Chui, a fifth-generation offspring of Li Yuan, the founding emperor of the Tang Dynasty (618 - 907).
The princess died of illness at 25.
Tang Dynasty is widely regarded as a high point in Chinese civilization. It left behind rich legacies including music, poetry and romance stories.
"This dainty headgear is an evidence of the affluence of the Tang Dynasty," said Zhao Xichen, a researcher with the restoration team. "Few modern jewelry can compete its luxury."
