ISSN 2152-7237 (print)ISSN 2153-2060 (online)

The

Silk RoadVolume 13 2015

ContentsIn Memoriam: Khaled al-Asaad, 1932-2015 ............................................................................................ [v]

Safe Journey! A Very Short History of Shoes from Korean Tombs by Youngsook Pak ............................................................................................................... 1

The Emergence of Light: A Re-interpretation of the Painting of Mani’s Birth in a Japanese Collection by Wang Yuanyuan 王媛媛 ............................................................................................... 17

When Herakles Followed the Buddha: Power, Protection and Patronage in Gandharan Art by Jonathan Homrighausen .............................................................................................. 26

Ancient Iranian Decorative Textiles: New Evidence from Archaeological Investigations and Private Collections by Matteo Compareti ......................................................................................................... 36

Nomads and Oasis Cities: Central Asia from the 9th to the 13th Century by Xinru Liu ........................................................................................................................ 45

Maes Titianus, Ptolemy, and the “Stone Tower” on the Great Silk Road by Igor’ Vasil’evich P’iankov ............................................................................................ 60

The Location of Ptolemy’s Stone Tower: the Case for Sulaiman-Too in Osh by Riaz Dean ....................................................................................................................... 75

The Test Excavation of the Nanhai No. 1 Shipwreck in 2011: a Detail Leading to the Whole by Xu Yongjie 许永杰 .......................................................................................................... 84

The Archaeological Assessment of Pajadagh Fortress (Qal’a-e Tashvir), Tashvir Village, Tarom County, Zanjan Province by Ali Nourallahi ............................................................................................................... 88

Khermen Denzh Town in Mongolia by Nikolai N. Kradin, Aleksandr L. Ivliev, Ayudai Ochir, Lkhagvasuren Erdenebold, Sergei Vasiutin, Svetlana Satantseva, and Evgenii V. Kovychev ........................... 95

The Chinese Inscription on the Lacquerware Unearthed from Tomb 20, Gol Mod I Site, Mongolia by Chimiddorj Yeruul-Erdene and Ikue Otani ............................................................. 104

The Ancient Tamga-Signs of Southeast Kazakhstan and Their Owners: The Route from East to West in the 2nd Century BCE – 2nd Century CE by Alexei E. Rogozhinskii and Sergey A. Yatsenko ................................................................ 109

(continued)

“The Bridge between Eastern and Western Cultures”

Museum Collections: Assyrian-style Seals of the Silk Road and Their Relationship to Ties between Iran and Mesopotamia by Amir Saed Mucheshi .................................................................................... 126

“I was born a dervish and a Flying Dutchman.” Sven Hedin and Ferdinand von Richthofen: Introduction and Presentation of Unpublished Letters by Felix de Montety ............................................................................................ 135

Museum Collections II: Berlin’s “Turfan Collection” Moves to the Center by Lilla Russell-Smith ......................................................................................... 153

The Mezquita: A Photo Essay by Daniel C. Waugh ............................................................................................ 158

ReviewsThe Dawn of Tibet [Bellezza], by Sam van Schaik ...................................................................................................... 169

[The following all by Daniel C. Waugh:]From Yuan to Modern China and Mongolia [Rossabi] ................................................................................................. 171Pamirian Crossroads: Kirghiz and Wakhi of High Asia [Kreutzmann] , with a photo supplement “Glimpses of the Pamirian Crossroads” ....................................................................................... 173Akademicheskaia arkheologiia na beregakh Nevy ............................................................................................................ 178

The Silk Road: Interwoven History. Vol. I. Long-distance Trade, Culture, and Society [ed. Walter and Adler] ....... 179

Life along the Silk Road, 2nd ed. [Whitfield] ................................................................................................................. 180

Book notices (written/compiled by Daniel C.Waugh) .......................................................................................... 182

Shelach-Lavi. The Archaeology of Early China.

Vadetskaia et al. Svod pamiatnikov Afanas’evskoi kul’tury. Selegin and Shelepova. Tiurkskie ritual’nye kompleksy Altaia.

Zhuravlev et al. Iuvelirnye izdeliia iz kurgana Kul’-Oba v so-branii Istoricheskogo Muzeia.

Minasian. Metalloobrabotka v drevnosti i srednevekov’e.

Jacobs. Reorienting the East. Jewish Travelers to the Medieval Muslim World.

Kradin. Nomads of Inner Asia in Transition.

Kradin and Ivliev. Istoriia Kidan’skoi imperii Liao (907-1125).

Antonov. Srednevekovye bashkiry.

Rossiiskie ekspeditsii v Tsentral’nuiu Aziiu. Organizatsiia, polevye issleovaniia, kollektsii 1870–1920-e gg.

Lin. Building a Sacred Mountain: The Buddhist Architecture of China’s Mount Wutai.

Elikhina. “Obitel’ miloserdiia”. Iskusstvo tibetskogo buddizma: katalog vystavki.

Complexity of Interaction along the Eurasian Steppe Zone in the First Millennium CE. Ed. Bemmann; Schmauder.

Nomads as Agents of Cultural Change. The Mongols and Their Eurasian Predecessors. Ed. Amitai; Biran.

Journal of Asian History. 49 (2015), 1/2. Special Edition Ed. Kauz: Chinese and Asian Geographical and Cartographical Views on Central Asia and Its Adjacent Regions.

Bulletin of the Asia Institute. N.S./Vol. 24 (2010) [2014].

Bulletin of the Asia Institute. N.S./Vol. 25 (2011) [2015].

Journal of Inner Asian Art and Archaeology 6/2011 [2015].

Color Plates I – VIII ....................................................................................................................................... after p. 192

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Cover: The people of ancient Palmyra: funerary sculptures from the Palmyra tombs, as displayed in the following museums: the Palmyra Museum, the National Museum (Damascus), the Louvre (Paris), the British Museum (London), the Ashmolean Museum (Oxford), the Altes Museum (Berlin), the Glyptote-ket (Copenhagen), the Archaeological Museum (Istanbul), and the Archaeological Museum (Gaziantep).

Photographs all by Daniel C. Waugh.

ReadeRs aRe stRongly encouRaged to view the online veRsion of the jouRnal,since so many of the illustRations aRe in coloR and can be best appReciated that way.

The Silk Road is an annual publication of the Silkroad Foundation supplied free of charge in a limited print run to academic libraries. We cannot accept individual subscriptions. Each issue can be viewed and downloaded free of charge at: <http://www.silkroadfoundation.org/toc/newsletter.html>. The print version contains black and white illustrations, the few color plates a new feature beginning with Volume 11 (2013); the online version uses color throughout. Otherwise the content is identical.

The complete online version of The Silk Road, Vol. 13 is at: <http://www.silkroadfoundation.org/newsletter/vol13/srjournal_v13.pdf>. Starting with Vol. 10, individual articles may also be downloaded as pdf files.

The journal actively invites submissions of articles. Please feel free to contact the editor with any questions or contributions. Information regarding contributions and how to format them may be found on the website at <http://www.silkroadfoun-dation.org/newsletter/vol8/SilkRoadinstructionsforauthors.pdf>. It is very important to follow these guidelines, especially in the matter of citations, when submitting articles for consideration.

Editor: Daniel C. Waugh dwaugh@u.washington.eduAll physical mailings concerning the journal (this includes books for review) should be sent to the editor at his postal address: Daniel Waugh, Department of History, Box 353560, University of Washington, Seattle, WA 98195 USA. It is advisable to send him an e-mail as well, informing him of any postings to that address.

Copyright © 2015 The Silkroad FoundationCopyright © 2015 by authors of individual articles and holders of copyright, as specified, to individual images.

The Silkroad Foundation (14510 Big Basin Way # 269, Saratoga, CA 95070) is a registered non-profit educational organization.

The Silk Road is printed by E & T Printing, Inc. <www.etcolorprint.com>, 1941 Concourse Drive, San Jose, CA 95131.

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The Mongolian-French joint archaeological ex-pedition carried out excavation at the Gol Mod

I site in Central Mongolia (Khairkhan sum, Arkhan-gai aimag) from 2000 to 2010. The Gol mod I site is a mortuary complex of the Xiongnu elite located in a valley on the northern side of the mountains. The

site was discovered by Mongolian archaeologist Ts. Dorzhsüren who excavated 26 small circular (satel-lite) burials in 1956–1957 (Dorzhsüren 1958). Between 2000 and 2010, the Mongolian-French joint archaeo-logical expedition excavated three elite tombs and fif-teen satellite burials. Since 2014, a Mongolian-Monaco

joint expedition has started to work at the Gol Mod I site. The topographic study of this site registered 483 Xiongnu tombs; 214 (44.3%) of these were aristocratic tombs with entrance passage and the other 269 were satel-lite and circle shaped burials [Yeruul-Erdene 2014]. Burial 20 is one of the largest and was completely excavated between 2001 and 2004-2005 [Yeruul-Erdene and Gan-tulga 2008]. The excavation uncovered a good many ar-tefacts and provided new knowledge of burial struc-ture. This article reports on a Chinese inscription carved on lacquerware found in the tomb.1

The lacquerware was found in the space between the outer structure and cof-fin, near the short side of the coffin [Fig. 1]. The ware was

The Chinese insCripTion on The LaCquerware unearThed from Tomb 20, GoL mod i siTe,

monGoLia

Chimiddorj Yeruul-ErdeneUlaanbaatar, Mongolia

Ikue OtaniNara, Japan

Fig. 1. Plan of Tomb No. 20 at Gol Mod I, showing location of finds, the arrow indicating the remains

of the lacquerware and its rim.

The Silk Road 13 (2015): 104 – 108 104 Copyright © 2015 Chimiddorj Yeruul-Erdene and Ikue OtaniCopyright © 2015 The Silkroad Foundation

broken into many pieces, only two of which (here referred to as Piece 1 and Piece 2) have a Chinese inscrip-tion [Fig. 2]. The Chinese character inscription was carved on the un-dersurface of the rim. The inscrip-tion is not conserved completely; the beginning of the sentence and some characters between Piece 1 and 2 are lost. Fig. 3 (next page)shows the individual characters and our identifications. In the anal-ysis which follows, we identify each character as “Piece No._-Character No._”; the symbol □ marks where there is an indecipherable charac-ter; and square brackets [ ] mark a most probable character.

In our reading then, the inscrip-tion is:

Piece 1: [紵]黄釦尺五寸旋永始元年 [供] 工ニ[武]造護臣 [敬]□□

Piece 2: 掾臣[昌]主右丞臣□守令臣並省

From 1-1 to 1-7: This part of the sen-tence specifies the technical charac-teristics of this ware.紵 zhu: Zhu is a cloth of hemp. In

this case, it is supposed that lost upper character of zhu will be 夾jia. Zhujia means pasting cloth on the wooden core of the ware. Zhujia is a technique to enhance its strength.

黄 huang 釦 kou: Huang is yellow, and kou means cover. Huangkou indicates that the rim of the ware was encased in gold (in fact, the metal is a gilded bronze). The bronze object found near the lac-querware has to be its rim [Fig. 1].

尺 chi 五 wu 寸 cun: This sentence expresses the size of the ware. Chi and cun are oriental linear mesuring units (on a decimal scale), and a character before the unit is the number. The character

Fig. 2. The lacquerware fragments. On the left is most of Piece 1 (the first char-acter not shown); on the right all of Piece 2. Note that the two pieces as shown

here are not in the same scale.

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one has been omitted, but wu is five. We know the size (diameter) of this ware is 15 cun, i.e., 34.5 cm (1 chi is equal to 23 cm in the Western Han era).

旋 xuan: Xuan is a kind of ware. There are two such known objects identified by their inscriptions as xuan, a round tray with feet. One of them was un-earthed from Yaoziling Tomb No. 2, made at the West factory of Shu in 2 BCE. Yaoziling’s ware re-sembles that of Gol Mod in its pattern painted in red [Fig. 4].

From 1-8 to 1-11: This part indicates the date of man-ufacture.永 yong 始 shi 元 yuan 年 nian: The Western Han, the

first year of the yongshi era is 16 BCE.

From 1-12 to 1-16: This part identifies the production factory and artisan.

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供 gong 工 gong: Gonggong, the Imperial Workshop, is the name of a factory belonging to the central government which made many kinds of articles for the central government and royal court. This work-shop was located in the palace of the Han dynasty at Chang’an (Xi’an), Shanxi province, China.

ニ武 wu 造 zao: ニis a repetition mark referring to the previous character; so this is also gong, and it means “artisan”. Zao is a verb meaning “produced.” In-scriptions on products of central factories do not identify all the artisans involved in making an object; so this artisan Wu will be a representative craftsman.

From 1-17 to 2-13: This part records those responsible for quality control. Products of central factories were checked by officials, recorded in ascending order from the lowest to the highest in rank, those positions or functions being:

for the lower, production management stage: 護 hu (inspector) → 佐 zuo (assistant clerk) → 嗇夫 sefu (workshop overseer) → 令史 lingshi (head secre-tary) → 掾 yuan (executive officer)

for the upper, final inspection stage: 右丞 youcheng (deputy director of the right) → 令 ling (director)

Each person is recorded by this formula: “(his func-tion) + (臣 chen [“your servant”]) + (name)”. Follow-ing the last name in the list for each stage is a verb, ei-ther 主 zhu (supervised/managed) for the lower stage officials directly managing the production or 省 xing (inspected) for the upper stage officials responsible for inspection of the finished product. If the character 守 shou is added before the position title, it means the post is a temporary one which the given officer fills in addition to his regular duty.

So this sentence can read: The Inspector your servant Jing 敬, … the Assis-tant Clerk your servant Chang 昌 supervised. The Deputy Director of the Right your servant [name] and Provisional Director your servant Bing 並 in-spected.

This inscription has a gap in middle, but we can sup-pose that the missing part identified a lower stage of-ficial in a position between zuo and lingshi.

Conclusion

Through the reading of inscription, we knew this xuan tray was made in the Gonggong imperial workshop in 16 BCE. This is important as it is only the fifth ab-solutely dated object excavated from Xiongnu elite tombs in Mongolia and Transbaikalia.2 Of course the date can be only a terminus post quem for the tomb but

we can at least hypothesize regarding the circum-stances in which the lacquered tray arrived in Mongo-lia. In 53 BCE the Xiongnu had agreed to a new kind of relationship with the Han Dynasty, at least in for-mal terms accepting the status of tributaries, in return for which the Han then frequently sent “gifts” to the Xiongnu ruler Chanyu 単于, often of substantial val-ue. The date of 16 BCE falls in the Xiongnu reign of Souxie 搜諧若鞮単于 (20–12 BCE), who was succeeded by Cheya 車牙若鞮単于 (12–8 BCE). Since the lacquer xuan tray was made in the imperial workshop and thus was not an item that would normally have been available through simple commercial transactions, we might assume it formed part of the “tribute” gifts sent by the Han to Mongolia in one of the indicated reigns.

About the authorsChimiddorj Yeruul-Erdene (Chimiddorzh Erööl-Erdene) is a researcher of the Mongolian Academy of Sciences, In-stitute of History and Archaeology. The excavations at Gol Mod I occupy an important place in the field work he has done over the years, and he has published extensively on Xiongnu archaeology. E-mail: <cheruulerd@yahoo.com>.

Ikue Otani, an associate fellow at Nara National Research Institute for Cultural Properties (Japan), has a particular interest in archaeological metalwork from the Han to the Tang era. E-mail: <ikueoht@nabunken.go.jp>. Bibliogra-phy with links to abstracts: <http://researchmap.jp/io-tani/?lang=english>.

ReferencesChistiakova 2009A[gniia]. N. Chistiakova. “Ieroglificheskaia nadpis’ na la-kovoi chashke iz kurgana № 20 v Noin-Ule (Mongoliia).” [The Chinese inscription on the lacquer cup excavated from Kurgan No. 20, Noin-Ula.]. Arkheologiia Etnografiia i Antro-pologiia Evrazii / Archaeology, Ethnography and Anthropology of Eurasia 2009/3: 59–68.

Dorzhsüren 1958Ts. Dorzhsüren. 1956-1957 ond Arkhangai aimagt arkheologi-in shinshilgee khiisen tukhaia [Archaeological research in the Arkhangai Aimag in 1956-1957]. Ulaanbaatar, 1958.

Hunan ICA and Yongzhou ZOPA 2001Hunan Provincial Institute of Cultural Relics and Archaeol-ogy [湖南省文物考古研究所]; Yongzhou City Zhishan Dis-trict Office for the Preservation of Ancient Monuments [永州市芝山区文物管理所]. “Western Han Tomb No.2 at Yao-ziling in Yongzhou City, Hunan [湖南永州市鹞子岭二号西汉墓].” Kaogu 考古[Archaeology] 2001/4: 45–62.

Louis 2006-2007François Louis. “Han Lacquerware and the Wine Cups of Noin Ula.” The Silk Road 4/2 (2006-2007): 48–53.

Mönkhbayar and Yeruul-Erdene 2011Lkhagvadorj Mönkhbayar and Chimiddorj Yeruul-Erdene.

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“Gol modni 20-r bulshnaas oldson savni nangiad bicheec” [Examination of the Chinese inscription from Tomb № 20 of the Gol Mod site]. Arkheologiin Sudlal / Studia Archaeologica XXХI/8 (2011): 130–33.

Pirazzoli-t’Serstevens 1982Michèle Pirazzoli-t’Serstevens. The Han Dynasty. Tr. by Janet Seligman. Rizzoli International Publications, 1982.

Pirazzoli-t’Serstevens 2007_____. “A Chinese Inscription from a Xiongnu Elite Barrow in the Tsaraam Cemetery.” The Silk Road 5/1 (2007): 56–58.

Pirazzoli-t’Serstevens 2009_____., “Chinese Lacquerware from Noyon-uul: Some Prob-lems of Manufacturing and Distribution.” The Silk Road 7 (2009): 31–41.

Polos’mak et al. 2011Natal’ia V. Polos’mak, Evgenii S. Bogdanov, Agniia N. Chistiakova, and Liudmilla P. Kundo. “Lacquer Ear-Cups from Burial Mound 20 in Noyon Uul.” Xiongnu Archaeology: Multidisciplinary Perspectives of the First Steppe Empire in In-ner Asia. Bonn Contributions to Asian Archaeology, Vol. 5. Bonn: Vor- und Frühgeschichtliche Archäologie Rehinische Friedrich-Wilhelms-Universität, 2011: 327–32.

Wang 1982Wang Zhongshu. Han civilization.Tr. by K. C. Chang and col-laborators. New Haven; London: Yale Univ. Pr., 1982.

Yeruul-Erdene 2014Chimiddorj Yeruul-Erdene. “Gol Modny Khünnügiin iazguurtny orshuulgin gazrin bairlal zuin sudalgaa” [Topo-graphic study of the Gol Mod Xiongnu aristocratic ceme-tery]. Arkheologiin Sudlal / Studia Archaeologica XXХIV/18 (2014): 236–44.

Yeruul-Erdene and Gantulga 2008 Chimiddorj Yeruul-Erdene and Zham’ian-Ombo Gantul-ga. “Umard Khünnügiin iazguurtny negen bulshny sudal-gaa” [Research on a northern Xiongnu aristocratic tomb]. Arkheologiin Sudlal / Studia Archaeologica XXVI/9 (2008): 149–89.

Notes1. The first report was written by Mönkhbayar and

Yeruul-Erdene [2011]. Here we correct the preliminary reading.2. Other lacquerware found in Xiongnu tombs include

cups from Noyon Uul (The Hermitage Museum, Inv. № MR-2301 and National Museum of Mongolian History, Inv. № A-242), analyzed by Louis 2006-2007 and Pirazzo-li-t’Serstevens 2009; from Noyon Uul Tomb № 20, analyzed by Chistiakova 2009 and Polos’mak et al. 2011; Tsaram № 7 (Transbaikalia), analyzed by Pirazzoli-t’Serstevens 2007. The reading of the inscription from Noyon Uul Tomb № 20 offered by Chistiakova 2009 and Polos’mak et al. 2001 is not entirely accurate. This ware was made in the Kaogong central factory; so the order of inspectors must be same as Gonggong central factory. Following the listing of the low-er-level inspectors should be the verb zhu 主 (supervised/managed). The inscription reads:

乘輿,髹 畫木黄耳一升十六籥棓,元延四

年,考工ニ通繕, 工憲,守佐臣文,嗇夫臣

勳,掾臣文主,右丞臣光,令臣譚省.

For more information about the Han dynasty’s lacquer pro-duction, see Wang 1982 and Pirazzoli-t’Serstevens 1982.

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