Abstract

A stone chamber tomb with corridor entrances is a burial system which was very popular in ancient East Asia and was also employed as a burial system for the ruling class in the Silla dynasty. The appearance of talismanic exquisite instruments as burial accessories is assumed to be related to changes in the Silla burial system. As the Silla wooden chamber with stone mound are a stone-lined pit, they have a one-time closed structure. However, the with talismanic exquisite instruments to prevent intrusion from outside, such as tomb theft, tomb damage, or invisible evil spirits. The Silla dynasty would have employed a new type of burial system known as a stone chamber tomb and these associated exquisite instruments as well. In the case of with Now that the Silla dynasty did not adopt mural paintings for most of the stone chamber tombs, the vestiges of tomb guardians are hardly found unlike the mural pain tin gs of However, a dragon which is on e of the twelve zodiac an imal deities and defense deity appears as a tomb guardian in the Silla stone chamber tomb. The twelve zodiac animal deities were placed along with other clay figures inside the tomb chamber in the early period but gradually buried outside the tomb chamber and changed into ornaments of stone circles around the tomb. The twelve zodiac animal deities of Silla wore ordinary clothes or armors and bore weapons as features, which suggests that the twelve zodiac animal deities were used as gatekeepers, tomb guardians, in the stone chamber tombs of Silla.

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