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Tang Dynasty noblewoman buried with gold hair ornaments and Persian coins
The tomb of a Tang Dynasty noblewoman with exceptional grave goods has been unearthed in Shaanxi, China. It contains ceramics, bronzes, iron scissors, stoneware, gold and silver artifacts and 19 Persian silver coins. The artifacts and coins enrich our understanding of trade between Tang Dynasty China and other countries in the 7th century.
Between January 2022 and April 2024, a team from the Shaanxi Provincial Institute of Archaeology excavated a series of ancient tombs in the Jiali Village area of Xi’an. Tomb M228 proved particularly notable, thanks to its high-value, well-preserved artifacts and precisely defined date. The epitaph, carved on a stone slab, records the tomb as belonging to Ma San Niang, the wife of Dong Shunxian, a Left Guard of the Imperial Guard in Longxi. She died on May 17th, 698 A.D., at her home in Daixianli. She was 29 years old.
The area where she was buried also contains other tombs of the Dong family, including another high-ranking woman — Dong Shaorong, the wife of Tang Dynasty prime minister Zhang Jiuling. The Dong clan had close kinship connections to the imperial House of Li, rulers of the Tang Dynasty. The detailed epitaph provides new information that helps fill in the blanks in the Dong family genealogy and history.
Her luxurious grooming artifacts include a bronze octagonal mirror decorated on the back with flowers and birds, a gold hairpin, a gold comb back intricately decorated with filigree and granulation. They are exceptionally crafted, as are the silver objects. A silver tripod jar and a silver stemmed goblet are decorated with intricate designs of grape and honeysuckle, a motif imported from the Western Regions on the Silk Road bordering Sasanian Persia. The objects showcase a high-level metalwork that blends local and foreign styles.
According to Shi Sheng, a researcher with the Shaanxi Academy of Archaeology, the artifacts discovered in Ma Sanniang’s tomb provide important physical evidence of cultural interaction and international trade during the Tang Dynasty. The presence of Western-inspired designs suggests that artisans in China’s central plains were not only aware of foreign aesthetics but were actively incorporating them into luxury goods. This fusion reflects the cosmopolitan nature of Tang society, particularly during its peak in the 7th century.
The Sassanid Persian coins also attest to how far-reaching the commercial and cultural links were between Tang China and countries to the west. Two of the 19 coins are rare types stamped with special symbols. The Persian coins were more artifact than legal tender, buried as objects of prestige and value. Ma San Niang was also buried with plenty of spending money for the afterlife, though: almost 1,000 Kaiyuan Tongbao coins threaded on a string were found by her waist and right leg.
Beyond their artistic value, the objects serve as valuable research materials for historians studying economic and cultural connections between China and neighboring civilizations. The combination of imported design elements and local craftsmanship illustrates how the Tang Dynasty functioned as a crossroads of East-West interaction, reinforcing its reputation as one of the most globally connected empires of the medieval world.
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