Jade Burial Suit

Also known as "jade casket" or "jade case", a jade burial suit is a ceremonial suit made of pieces of jade in which only some nobles and emperors of the Han Dynasty were buried. It was a top class burial suit at that time. In ancient times, jade was believed to be the essence of mountains and have the power to keep the body from decaying. The suit appeared around the Wenjing Period of the Western Han Dynasty and its origin dates back to the Eastern Zhou Dynasty, when there were "jade-studded facial covers" and "jade-studded clothes". The jade burial suit had been popular for a total of 400 years before Cao Pi of the Three-Kingdoms Period imposed a ban on the use of such suits.

The making of a jade burial suit was no easy job, because it had strict requirements on techniques. First, jade materials transported from far-away places were processed into thousands of small jade pieces of certain shapes and sizes after lots of procedures; second, each jade piece was polished and drilled, with the shapes and sizes of the holes undergoing special scrutiny and delicate processing; third, a lot of specially made gold, silver or copper threads were used to join the jade pieces. The finished suites were respectively called "gold thread sewn jade burial suit", "silver thread sewn jade burial suit" and "copper thread sewn jade burial suit". The shape of the suit was the same as a human body. The cost of making a medium-sized jade burial suit was almost equal to the property values of 100 then middle-class families put together. You can have an idea what an extravagance the suit was.

So far, there have been a total of 18 tombs with jade burial suits of the Western Han Dynasty discovered in China, with only 8 tombs holding gold thread sewn jade suits. The most representative one is the gold thread sewn jade suit found in the tomb of Liu Sheng in Mancheng, Hebei Province. It consists of 2,498 jade plates of different sizes that are joined with gold threads of over 1,000 grams. It was completed by more than 100 craftsmen in over two years. The jade burial suit is delicately designed and exquisitely made. It's a rare treasure in the world. The discovery of the suit stunned the archeological fields of China and the world when it was unearthed in 1968.