The Beijing Dabaotai Western Han Tombs Museum is a historical museum on special topics and is China's first museum of Western Han (206BC-8AD) tombs. Built in November 1979 and opened to the public on December 1, 1983, the museum is located in Dabaotai Village in Fengtai District, Beijing.
Archeologists excavated the site in 1974 and 1975, and the museum is built around the No.1 Tomb -- the tomb of Liu Jian (73-45BC), the prince of Guangyang of the Western Han Dynasty. The huge tomb is comprised of burial chamber, antechamber (furnished like an imperial sitting room) and coffin chamber (with five coffins for the emperor). The underground palace has a very large scale and special construction. It adopts the "System of the Sons of the Heaven", namely, the highest level funeral system specially used by the emperors of the Western Han Dynasty. The whole palace is built by several hundred cubic meters of cypresses and chinaberries, and the bottom area is 417.6 square meters. It is called as Xin Palace, Bian House and Huangchangticou. There are 2 carriages with red-spotted wheel and green cover and bones of 11 horses that were buried alive with the dead.
The museum features four basic displays: Restored Dabaotai No.1 Tomb, Dabaotai No.1 Funerary Objects, Restored Dabaotai Carriages, and Dabaotai Unearthed Relics.
Though the tomb did mot escape early grave robbers and vandals, over 400 burial objects of pottery, bronze, iron, jade, agate, lacquer and silk were salvaged. A piece of the earliest decarbonized steel known in China, woven brocade hat ribbons and iron axes stamped with the characters Yuyang Ironsmith, as well as local agricultural products are also on display.
Besides receiving visitors on a daily basis, the museum also provides service to education of literary history in various academies and history classes in middle schools.
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