Jade Clothes Sewn with Gold 2008-5-28 15:01:08
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- 0.13mm 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 artisan to finishing making such piece of jade clothes.
