The Tomb of King Muryeong: The One Three Kingdoms Tomb That Names Its Occupant

Read about Korean antiquity for long enough and you meet the phrase "thought to be" constantly. Tombs are the worst for it: the form suggests a period, the grave goods suggest a rank, the position suggests a lineage.

The tomb of King Muryeong is the one you do not have to guess about, because the name and the date were written inside it. That single tomb is what sets the clock for Baekje history.

Opening hours and location are on the place page for the tomb park. This article is about what came out of it and why that matters so much.

At a glance

Seven royal tombs
Seven tombs lie on the south-facing mid-slope below Songsan, a hill of about 120 metres.
Stone chambers, and two of brick
Tombs 1 to 5 are corridor-and-chamber stone tombs; tomb 6 and King Muryeong's tomb are built of brick.
Found in 1971
King Muryeong's tomb came to light during repair work on tombs 5 and 6.
Two inscribed stones
The tablets of the king and the queen were found together, the only land-purchase document known from a Three Kingdoms royal tomb.

One fact about this hillside

It is worth knowing the situation here first.

Tombs 1 to 6 were investigated in the colonial period and their structure and type established, and tombs 1 to 4 had already been robbed before that work began.

So most of what can be said about this hillside was worked out from empty rooms. The structure is knowable; what was inside, and who was buried, is not.

King Muryeong's tomb is the exception. Nobody knew it was there until 1971, and it was therefore opened untouched.

Found during drainage work

The circumstances of the discovery are unremarkable, which is rather the point.

The tomb was found during repair work on tombs 5 and 6 in 1971. It turned up while the neighbours were being worked on. West of the valley are King Muryeong's tomb and tombs 5 and 6; tombs 1 to 4 are to the north-east — close enough that touching one exposed the other.

Walk the park today and that arrangement is exactly what you see.

What the two stones do

The most important thing found inside was not gold but two slabs of stone.

The king's tablet is 41.5 by 35 centimetres and carries six lines; the queen's is the same size and carries four. The king's record agrees with the account in the Samguk Sagi.

That is the whole significance of this tomb. A king named in the histories and a tomb dug out of the ground confirmed each other. One on its own is a record; the two together are a fact.

The tablets are less an epitaph than a contract. They are land-purchase documents: at the funerals of the king and the queen a text was drawn up buying the burial ground from the god of the earth, and it was carved into stone. It is the only such document found in a Three Kingdoms royal tomb.

The purchase text was made for King Muryeong's funeral, and when the queen was later buried with him, the reverse of that same stone was used to carve her memorial text. One stone used twice, and the reuse itself records the interval between two funerals.

The pair was designated a National Treasure on 9 July 1974 and is held by Gongju National Museum.

Built of brick, which says something too

How the tombs were made also says where Baekje was connected.

Tomb 6 and King Muryeong's tomb are the surviving Baekje brick tombs. Their walls alternate courses of lotus-patterned bricks laid flat and on end, and both have a short tunnel passage in front of a tunnel chamber and a long drain.

The brick form is read as Chinese influence, and the murals as Goguryeo influence. Two directions of influence meet on one hillside.

Tomb 6, also called the Songsan-ri mural tomb, has a double arched passage and a long rectangular chamber laid neatly in bricks stamped with wuzhu coins, and its chamber walls carry seven lamp niches and paintings of the Four Guardians and of the sun and moon. King Muryeong's chamber has five lamp niches.

Same period, same technique, different count. Differences of that kind are the material for reading the order the tombs were built in.

What you actually see today

One thing to state plainly: you cannot go inside the tombs. They are closed for conservation, and what you see is the grass-covered mounds and how they are laid out.

So this is a site split across two addresses. The tombs are here; what came out of them is at Gongju National Museum — the tablets, and the grave goods of the king and queen. If you are choosing an order, walk the hillside first and see the museum second: the objects in the cases mean more once you have seen the empty mounds they came from.

The site was designated a Historic Site on 21 January 1963 and covers 541,524.4 square metres. In 2015 it was inscribed on the UNESCO World Heritage List as one of the eight components of the Baekje Historic Areas.

Compare the mounds against each other by eye. Tombs of the same type differing slightly in structure and scale are read as reflecting a difference in date, so sizing them up against one another is itself a lesson in how the sequence is worked out.

Worth pairing with this

Frequently asked questions

How was the tomb found?

During repair work on tombs 5 and 6 in 1971. Until then nobody knew a tomb was there.

Why is the occupant known?

Two inscribed tablets were found with the burial. The king's record agrees with the Samguk Sagi, and these are the only land-purchase tablets known from a Three Kingdoms royal tomb.

Why is so little said about the other tombs?

Tombs 1 to 4 had already been robbed before they were investigated. Colonial-period work established their structure and type, but not what was inside them.

Can you go inside?

The tomb interiors are not open. You see the mounds and their arrangement from outside, and the finds at Gongju National Museum.

Why brick?

Tomb 6 and King Muryeong's tomb are Baekje brick tombs, a form read as Chinese influence. The murals in tomb 6 are read as Goguryeo influence.