Watchtower

About the Art

Objects like this tower were small models based on real-life buildings, people and things that would accompany the deceased in the afterlife. Today, they can tell us what architecture was like at the time since few actual buildings remain from the period. Note the animal-mask door-pulls on the outside of the gate and the dragon-head roof eaves, auspicious symbols that would provide protection. The horizontal, latticed windows provided ventilation.

During the Han dynasty in China (206 BCE–220 CE), there were many ideas about what happened after death. A common view was that a person has two souls, the hun and po. The hun is the spiritual soul and the po is the physical soul. At death, the hun went on a journey to another world while the po stayed with the body underground. The world underground was thought to be like life on earth, so graves were designed similar to homes and filled with clay replicas of objects and people that were needed in daily life.

FEATURED IMAGE
Artist(s) unknown (China, Eastern Han dynasty, 25–220 CE), Watchtower, 2nd century CE, earthenware with green glaze, 44 1/2 x 13 1/2 x 16 inches (113 x 34.3 x 40.6 cm). Museum purchase in memory of Kathleen (Kit) Johnston and in recognition of the many DAI volunteers she epitomized, 1992.18