The Silla dynasty in Gyeongju was established in 69 BCE when a strange light shown down onto a horse of pure white which was sheltering an egg. A boy hatched from the egg and established the Silla dynasty which spawned more than 56 monarchs before collapsing in 935 AC. There are loads of regal burial mounds from this period around the city, some well-visited and others, like the one we walked to last night (the seventh monarch was buried here), much quieter:
The mounds are dotted all over the city and beyond, some excavated, others being excavated and others untouched. The archaeological parks, right in the centre of the town, are beautiful and full of these mounds:
There’s a moat (with fish in it since we saw birds hanging about):
Above the moat, on the ridge, a palace is being painstakingly excavated:
There’s also an ancient astronomical observatory from the seventh century which doesn’t look so impressive but has considerable significance in its construction: the twelve base stones are either the months of the year or the signs of the Chinese zodiac; the 27 circular layers are in recognition of Queen Seondeok, 27th ruler of the Silla dynasty; two square levels on the top and the base makes 30 – the days in a lunar month – and the total numbers of bricks equals the days in a year! How’s that for symbolism?
The tower is enormously popular with Koreans and we were quickly caught up in their photos – these very jolly ladies spotted me snapping them:
In return, they insisted on a photo with Sue:
It’s hard not to include the endless funny photos of people dressed or taking photos of each other – but indulge me with these two:
We walked to the very impressive modern national museum which is stuffed to the gills with treasures from the excavated tombs (which don’t seem to have been robbed as so many elsewhere have been).
There was bling everywhere – we particularly liked the shoes:
The jewel beetles held special significance for the Silla – they were used as part of the jewellery as well as for other purposes. They were on show both inside the museum:
and outside where the jewel beetle train took tourists around the rather large number of sites:
And of course there was the obligatory photo stop including a jewel beetles:
Other appealing objects dug up from the graves included figures which reminded us of those in Japan:
And so much gold!
I love so much about this post! – all of it, actually, just wonderful. Says a lot about the people that the tombs were not raided
What an amazing dynasty the Silla seem to have been! I was always interested in how they managed to maintain independence from China. These grave treasures are truly remarkable – I read that their survival is due to the ‘remarkable’ grave engineering?