Sichuan reveals its tresures

The scepter has the images of the heads of two smiling men, each with a crown, and the patterns of two fishes and two birds.

The crowns, fishes and birds on the scepter form a pictograph meaning King Yu Fu and the scepter could have belonged to him, says Chen.

Fish and birds are believed to be totems of Yu Fu which means fish cormorant in Chinese, he says.

Information about Can Cong and Du Fu, the two kings of the Shu kingdom, is scant, which is evident from the lines of a poem by Li Bai (701-762), the greatest ancient Chinese poet from the school of romanticism.

His poem "Traveling on the Shu Path is like ascending to the sky" is known to every Chinese high school student and prescribed reading for every foreign student learning Chinese literature.

In the poem, Li says that though Can Cong and Yu Fu established the Shu Kingdom people know very little about them.

For now, the bronze masks with the protruding eyes and the gold scepter tell us almost all of what we know about two kings of the Shu kingdom, says archaeologists.