Ritual House at Sungneung Royal Tomb, Guri

Sungneung is the tomb of King Hyeonjong, the 18th king of Joseon, and his queen, Queen Myeongseong of the Kim clan; it is the fourth tomb built at the Donggureung Royal Tombs in Guri. The tomb takes the form of a ssangneung (twin tomb), with the burial mounds of king and queen placed side by side on the same hill. The Ritual House (jeongjagak) is a building with a "T"-shaped floor plan, used for performing ancestral rites. It was built in 1674, the year King Hyeonjong died and King Sukjong acceded to the throne. The Ritual House at Sungneung is the only one among the ritual houses of the forty Joseon royal tombs to survive with a hip-and-gable roof; it is an eight-bay building comprising a five-bay main hall and a three-bay offering hall. Such an eight-bay Ritual House, in place of the usual five-bay form, arose because the function of the yeongakjeon was absorbed into the Ritual House, enlarging its scale. The yeongakjeon was a building within the royal tomb precinct used to enshrine temporarily the coffin of the king or queen; its size, governed by the chamber housing the coffin and by the arrangement of ritual implements, made it larger than the Ritual House itself. Between 1673 and 1674, however, the relocation of King Hyojong's tomb, Yeongneung, together with the state funerals of King Hyojong's queen, Queen Inseon, and of King Hyeonjong, had to be carried out in rapid succession, straining the finances needed for tomb construction and increasing the burden on the people. Accordingly, King Sukjong, on the throne when King Hyeonjong's tomb was built, reduced the scale of the construction, and as part of this the yeongakjeon was not built, its function being absorbed by the Ritual House instead. According to documents such as the Royal Protocols of the Directorate for Royal Tomb Construction, the ritual houses at Yeongneung (tomb of King Sejong), Gangneung (tomb of King Myeongjong), Jangneung (tomb of King Injo) and Yeongneung (tomb of King Hyojong) all originally had hip-and-gable roofs, but all were later replaced with plain gable roofs, so that today only the Ritual House at Sungneung retains its hip-and-gable roof. The account of the building's construction recorded in the Royal Protocols for Sungneung shows little difference from its present appearance, indicating that since its construction in 1674 the building's scale and roof form have been maintained largely without alteration to the present day. The Ritual House at Sungneung is accordingly of great historical, scholarly and artistic value, as a valuable example illustrating the changed royal tomb system of the seventeenth century.

AI Translation

Where it is

Region

Guri, Gyeonggi

Designation

Treasure · 보물