Jade Clothes Sewn with Gold Thread
According to an ancient Chinese belief, when a man
had put on clothes made of jade pieces sewn together
with gold thread when he died, his remains would never
go rotten.
In 1968, Chinese archaeologists working in Mancheng,
Hebei Province, found such clothes in a tomb buried with the remains
of Liu Sheng, a princes of the Western Han Dynasty,
and those of his wife, Dou Pass. Only a few teeth and a pile of bones
were left of the remains, the jade clothes remained
intact. Liu's clothes were made of a total of 2,498 pieces of jade,
sewn together with lengths of thread that is 96 percent gold, 4 to 5
cm in length and 0.35-0.5 mm in diameter. There were also soft and sturdy
gold ropes made by twisting 12 pieces of gold thread 0.08-0.13 mm in
diameter. It took about 1,100 grams of gold to put Liu's clothes together.
His wife's clothes were fashioned out of 2,160 pieces of jade and sewn
with 700 grams of gold. Judging from the technology of today, it takes
an entire decade for an Chinese artisan to finishing
making such piece of jade clothes.
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