Gold Diadem Ornaments of King Muryeong

A pair of gold ornaments from the crown of a Baekje king, excavated from King Muryeong's tomb at Gongju. They are 30.7 and 29.2 cm high and 14 and 13.6 cm wide. When the tomb was found and examined in 1971 they lay one on top of the other inside the coffin, near the king's head. The gold sheet is pierced into a pattern of vine. Below it runs a stem with two or three small holes top and bottom, so that the ornament could be fixed to something. Flowers are set at the middle of the stems where they spread left and right, and as the stems draw out the whole shape reads as rising flame. Two strands turn downward, which breaks the symmetry. Bead-shaped ornaments are hung across the front face on twisted gold thread. King Muryeong's tomb is the brick-built tomb of the twenty-fifth Baekje king (r. 501–522) and his queen. What came out of it tells us a great deal about the level of Baekje culture in the first half of the sixth century, and about its burial practice; the stone tablet among the finds is the first from any Three Kingdoms tomb to state with certainty who was buried there and when it was made.

AI Translation

Where it is

Region

Gongju, Chungnam

Designation

National Treasure · 국보