THE FIRST EMPEROR’S TERRACOTTA WARRIORS

In 1974, some farmers were digging a well when they struck a vast underground vault. Inside was a spectacular discovery: a terracotta army of several thousand warriors. Each of these fired-clay figures stands more than six feet tall and weighs about 600 pounds. They all bear individual features, as if modelled after living men. The burial ground is found in Li Yi, east of the ancient Qin capital of Xianyang, near modern Xi’an in China’s Shaanxi Province. The Qin dynasty, which ran from 221 to 206 BCE. This year, Melbourne has an exhibition (May to October 2019) displaying figures from the tombs supplemented by more than 150 works of art and design spanning from 1200 BCE to 220CE

When the 13-year-old ruler Qin Shu Huang ascended the Qin throne in 247 BCE, the kingdom of Qin was just one of seven major powers called the Warring States. By 221, the other states were extinguished. The ultimate hallmark of the Qin was standardization. As part of its own internal consolidation, the Qin standardized legal codes, weights and measures, axle widths, and currency. It introduced a simpler written script. As the kingdom expanded, it used standardization to integrate conquered territories.

China’s first imperial capital was Xianyang, in the Wei River Valley. Xianyang was a walled city full of palaces. It housed the original Qin royal palace, replicas of the royal palaces of the six Warring States that Qin had conquered, and a new Imperial palace. Xianyang was home to many government officials. The government had ministries for rituals, taxation, agriculture, horses, war, and writing and enforcing the law. There were other ministries for roads and walls, as well.

The ancient Chinese saw the afterlife as a longer version of this life, including an analogous social structure and daily needs like food, money, clothing, and tools. The first emperor was obsessed with immortality. He sent expeditions across the empire to seek out alchemists and elixirs—but he was also hedging his bets. For an emperor who unified China by force, an army for the afterlife makes sense. After all, the army faces east, ready to march out and assert Qin dominance over the dead kings that the first emperor conquered in life.

Like almost everything else around the capital, the assembly and firing of the terracotta figures was run like the military: hierarchical, bureaucratic and meritocratic. The skilled artisans doing the fine work on the warriors were paid in imperial coin. They used standardized tools and measuring devices produced in government workshops. They travelled on government roads, worked in a regimented organization, and lived in a regimented society.

Yet for all that regimentation and standardization, the army that emerged from this process was remarkably diverse. No two figures are exactly alike. The figures were built in phases. Rather than using moulds, torsos were gradually built up with coils of wet clay. This produced a lot of variation in these torsos. The last phase before firing was attaching and tooling hairstyles, facial hair, and head-dressings. The clay of each progressive attachment was still wet and worked by human hands. This modular production system would make each figure unique. Variations in heat, humidity, and clay composition would also affect what came out of the kiln.

Once each soldier cooled, another set of craftsmen would set to work lacquering him in brilliant hues. The completed warrior was then gingerly moved into position, from the back of the pit to the front. The pit itself was covered by a huge wood and tile roof. Once in formation, a warrior was outfitted with real weapons.