Tang dynasty tomb figures are pottery figures of people and animals made in the Tang dynasty of China (618–906) as grave goods to be placed in tombs. There was a belief that the figures represented would become available for the service of the deceased in the afterlife. The figures are made of moulded earthenware with colour generally being added, though often not over the whole figure, or in naturalistic places. Where the colouring was in paint it has often not survived, but in many cases it was in sancai ("three-colour") ceramic glaze, which has generally lasted well.
The figures, called mingqui in Chinese, were most often of servants, soldiers (in male tombs) and attendants such as dancers and musicians, with many no doubt representing courtesans. In burials of people of high rank there may be soldiers and officials as well. The animals are most often horses, but there are surprising numbers of both Bactrian camels and their Central Asian drivers, distinguished by thick beards and hair, and their facial features. The depictions are realistic to a degree unprecedented in Chinese art, and the figures give archaeologists much useful information about life under the Tang. There are also figures of the imaginary monster "earth spirits" and the fearsome human Lokapala (or tian wang), both usually in pairs and acting as tomb guardians to repel attacks by both spirits and humans. Sets of the twelve imaginary beasts of the Chinese Zodiac are also found, usually unglazed.
The figures represent a development of earlier traditions of Chinese tomb figures, and in the Tang elaborate glazed figures are restricted to north China, very largely to the areas around the capitals. They "virtually disappear" from 755 when the highly disruptive An Lushan Rebellion began, which probably affected the kilns in Henan and Hebei making the pieces as well as their elite clientele. A much diminished tradition continued in later dynasties until the Ming. The use of sancai glazing on figures was restricted to the upper classes, and production was controlled by the imperial bureaucracy, but a single burial of a member of the imperial family might contain many hundreds of figures.
Context and meaning
A thousand years before the Tang figures, the Tomb of Marquis Yi of Zeng (d. about 433 BC) contained the bodies of 22 musicians, as well as the instruments they played. Traces of wooden figures wearing textiles are known from similar dates, and the First Emperor's Terracotta Army is famous; his funeral also involved the killing and burial of many servants and animals, including all his childless concubines. The excavated Han dynasty tombs we know about contained bronze or pottery figures of horses, and often groups of soldiers, well below life-size, in the tombs of commanders. Lower down the social scale, pottery models of houses and animals were very common, and continued into the Tang. By the time of the short-lived but effective Sui dynasty (581–618), the pattern of Tang tomb figures was essentially established, though the polychromy of sancai colours did not appear until the Tang.
The size and number of the figures in a grave depended on the rank of the deceased, as did the number that were glazed. Servants and farm animals were often glazed, painted or slip-painted white, or brown in the case of animals. The figures were paraded on carts as part of the funeral procession. They were then lined up outside the tomb before the coffin was taken inside. Once this was in place they were taken inside the tomb and arranged in the tomb, often along the sloping access way to the underground burial chamber, or in an ante-chamber to it. In large tombs there were niches built into the tomb walls for them to occupy.
Until recent years most pieces came from excavations that were not done by archaeologists and knowledge of the context of pieces was lacking. The important tomb of the Tang Princess Li Xianhui (or Yongtai) from 705 was discovered in 1960 in the imperial Qianling Mausoleum complex, and professionally excavated from 1964, the first of a number of excavations of major tombs, though others have been left deliberately undisturbed. It had been robbed in the past, probably soon after the burial, and items in precious materials taken, but the thieves had not bothered with the 777 unglazed and painted and around 60 glazed tomb figures (now mostly Shaanxi History Museum). These were mostly in "solid ranks" in stepped niches off the long sloping entrance way.