Geumgwanchong: found while digging house foundations, and the king named on the scabbard is still unidentified

At a glance

• 🏠1921, during building work

  Not a formal excavation, and much of the structure had already been destroyed when it was found.

• 👑Crown 44.4 cm tall

  It has an inner and an outer part; the outer is the classic Silla form.

• 🧷Seventeen pendant strands

  More than any other belt confirmed in Silla. The longest measures 54.5 cm.

• 🗡️Isaji-wang

  A king's name was confirmed on a scabbard. Who he was has not been established.

The name Geumgwanchong says exactly what the tomb gave up. It is called the gold crown tomb because the first complete gold crown in Korea — the object that stands for Silla in the popular mind — came out of it. Its catalogue number is Noseo-ri Tomb No. 128.

There was a price.

A substantial part of the structure had already been destroyed by the time it was found, and it was not formally excavated, so a great many uncertainties remain about the tomb's structure and the find contexts of its objects.

That matters because the inventory survived and the context did not. What lay where, what was inside the coffin and what outside — that is the channel through which archaeology gets a story out of objects, and at Geumgwanchong the channel was narrow from the start.

The quantities are still overwhelming. More than 30,000 beads including comma-shaped jades, and 7.5 kg of gold in total. The belt alone came up together with some 40,000 objects: ornaments, fittings, horse tack, weapons and vessels.

The tree-shaped uprights that come to mind when someone says Silla gold crown belong to the outer crown. Three tree-shaped uprights in three tiers stand at the front of the circular headband, with two antler-shaped ornaments at the rear left and right. Height 44.4 cm.

The two strands hanging below the headband in the photograph are its pendants. Gold chains hang from thin rings, ending in jade-green comma-beads capped with gold.

But this crown has a partner. A cap thought to be the inner crown was found outside the crown itself, and a similar case is known from Cheonmachong. A bird-wing shaped gold plate was set at the front of that cap.

The encyclopedia reads the wing this way: it is thought to reflect the beliefs of Three Kingdoms people and to be connected with shamanism. It is written as a supposition, and it is better left as one.

The belt has more to say.

Its composition: 40 openwork gold belt plaques and 17 pendant strands, with the longest pendant measuring 54.5 cm and ending in three gold beads. It carries more pendant strands than any other belt confirmed in Silla.

And here the object reaches beyond Gyeongju.

The same design as the Geumgwanchong plaques was also excavated from Songsan-ri Tomb No. 4, a Baekje royal tomb of the Ungjin period in Gongju, indicating exchange between Silla and Baekje in the later fifth century.

One design in the royal tombs of two kingdoms means either the objects travelled, or the makers did, or at minimum that a sense of what befitted royal rank was shared. If you have come from the tomb of King Muryeong, this connection is worth holding on to.

🔴 The judgement that a gold belt marks rank has evidence behind it too. Unlike gilt-bronze or silver belts, gold ones are judged to have been used by the very highest royal rank. In this tomb the gold, gilt-bronze and silver belts were in fact recovered together.

The most recent news from this tomb is not the discovery a century ago but two events in this century.

In 2013 the National Museum of Korea announced that the characters Isaji-wang were incised on the scabbard of an ornamented great sword from Geumgwanchong held in its storeroom.

Then in 2015, re-excavating Geumgwanchong, a museum survey team found a scabbard fragment carrying the five characters Isaji-wang-do, along with several objects that had not been recovered during the colonial period.

What that settled was half of the question.

The excavation made it clearer that the person buried in Geumgwanchong was Isaji-wang, but who Isaji-wang was has not been established.

A tomb opened in ruins in 1921 produced a name from a storeroom ninety-odd years later, and the name does not attach cleanly to any entry in the king list. Construction is dated to roughly the second half of the fifth century.

🔴 What the heritage record states is which institution administers an object. It is not a promise about what is in the case on the day you visit.

The two National Treasures whose registry names contain Geumgwanchong are both administered by Gyeongju National Museum. Taken as a whole, though, the finds from this tomb are divided between the National Museum of Korea and Gyeongju National Museum. That is why the Isaji-wang scabbard emerged from a storeroom in Seoul.

The tomb site itself survives. The excavated remains of Geumgwanchong are preserved in the Noseo-dong tomb park, with a marker stone reading Geumgwanchong standing on the spot. It is within walking distance of Daereungwon.

Opening hours and directions are on the Gyeongju National Museum place page.

Where to go next

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  Gyeongju National Museum

  Gyeongju National Museum, named in the heritage record as the administering body for both.

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  Daereungwon Tomb Complex

  Daereungwon — Geumgwanchong lies over in Noseo-dong, but the same city-centre tomb field.

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  Cheomseongdae Observatory

  Cheomseongdae, a century later than these tombs.

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  Donggung Palace and Wolji Pond

  Donggung and Wolji.