Cheonmachong: the Gyeongju Silla tomb, its gold crown and horse painting

The reason Cheonmachong was opened in 1973 was not Cheonmachong.

The Gyeongju development plan was to open the interior of Hwangnam-dong Tomb No. 98 — the largest tumulus in Korea — as a tourist attraction, and before touching it the team decided to excavate the smaller Tomb No. 155 first, to gain experience and information.

Tomb No. 155 is Cheonmachong, in the north-west of the Daereungwon tomb park in Gyeongju. Four National Treasures came out of the practice, and all four are administered by Gyeongju National Museum, so a visit means two stops: the tomb park for the mound, the museum for what was inside it.

At a glance

Four Treasures, one tomb
Gold crown, gold cap, gold belt, painted saddle flaps. Those are the four National Treasures whose registry names contain Cheonmachong.
Crown 32.5 cm tall
Thicker gold sheet than other Silla crowns, and its tree-shaped uprights run to four tiers rather than three.
The painting is tack
It was painted on a saddle flap, the panel hung on either side of a horse's belly to keep mud off the rider.
All four in Gyeongju
The heritage registry names Gyeongju National Museum as the administering body for all four.

The practice tomb turned out to be a large one

The plan was sensible. No. 98 was the largest tumulus in Korea, so you would not open it cold; you would learn on something smaller first.

But No. 155 was itself a large tomb, and the largest and closest to intact of any excavated up to that point. The mound stands 12.70 m high and measures 47 m across at the base.

So the dig stopped being a rehearsal and became a survey that produced a great deal of new information about royal-class Silla tumuli. The wooden chamber alone is 6.6 m by 4.2 m and about 2.1 m high.

What this leaves a visitor is a sense of scale for walking Daereungwon. Very few of the mounds you pass have had their insides seen. Cheonmachong is one of them, and it was not even the intended one.

With the crown, count the tiers first

Silla crowns resemble each other closely enough that once you have learned one, the rest all look like it. Two things separate this one.

First, the gold sheet is thicker than in other crowns.

Second, the tree-shaped uprights have four tiers. The arrangement — three at the front, two antler-shaped ornaments at the back — is standard Silla, but the branches climb one storey higher.

The jades are countable: nine on the headband, thirteen on each four-tier upright, five on each antler ornament. Height 32.5 cm.

Nobody knows where those two strands were attached

The two long strands hanging below the crown in the photograph are its pendants: closely linked heart-shaped spangles ending in three-winged ornaments.

A careful sentence follows them.

They were found detached from the headband, so the way they originally connected is not precisely known.

The arrangement you see in the museum is therefore a reconstruction. That distinction is not trivial when you look at an object photograph. The crown itself is fifteen centuries old; the phrase saying it hung like this is a twentieth-century judgement. Better to follow the encyclopedia, which wrote the boundary down rather than smoothing it away.

There is no guarantee the animal is a horse

The name of the tomb has a simple origin: the saddle flap with the painting was found at the centre of the tomb's eastern side.

A saddle flap is not a thing made to hang a picture on. It is the square panel hung on either side of a horse's belly so mud does not spatter the rider. Its construction is recorded too: layers of birch bark, faced with finer birch bark, quilted with fourteen diagonal lines at regular intervals, and only then painted.

Two were recovered. One is badly damaged; the other is very well preserved.

The animal soars, breathes out an auspicious vapour, and trails tail hair that splits into several long streams. And a single horn rises from its head.

The horn is the problem.

Those who read it as a heavenly horse point to the wings and the flying posture, and connect it to the divine horse that announces the arrival of a ruler in the founding myth of Bak Hyeokgeose.
Those who read it as a qilin point to the vapour and to the unicorn-like horn.

The name of the tomb has settled on heavenly horse. The argument has not.

And there is nothing to compare it with. No other saddle flap painted with a heavenly horse has yet been confirmed anywhere else.

Going to see them

The Korea Heritage Service registry tells you who looks after these objects. It cannot tell you which of them will be in a case on the day you go: displays are changed and objects are lent to special exhibitions. If one of the four is the reason for your trip, read Gyeongju National Museum's exhibition notices first.

The four National Treasures whose registry names contain Cheonmachong — crown, cap, belt and painted saddle flaps — are all administered by Gyeongju National Museum.

Before setting out, check the museum's current hours and directions on the Gyeongju National Museum place page.

What to look for

At the crown, count the tiers of the uprights. Four at the front means Cheonmachong; three means another tomb. Then look at the thickness of the sheet, the second feature that separates this crown from the others.

At the painting, look at the ground before the image. If you can see layered birch bark quilted in diagonal lines, that is the evidence that this object was horse tack before it was a painting.