Mawangdui is the name of a Han dynasty [206 BC-AD 24] archaeological site situated in China in a suburb of the modern town of Changsha, Hunan Province. Three tombs dated to the 2nd century BC were excavated during the 1970s, and revealed to belong to the Marquis of Dai, Li Dang [died 186 BC]; Lady Dai [died after 168 BC]; and their son [d. 168 BC]. The tombs were excavated between 15 and 18 meters below the ground surface and buried beneath a huge earthen mound.
Mawangdui (Chinese: 馬王堆; pinyin: Mǎwángduī, lit. Horse King Mound ) is an archaeological site located in Changsha, China. The site consists of two saddle-shaped hills and contained the tombs of three people from the western Han Dynasty (206 BCE - 9 CE). The tombs belonged to the first Marquis of Dai, his wife, and a male who is believed to be their son. The site was excavated from 1972 to 1974. Most of the artifacts from Mawangdui are displayed at the Hunan Provincial Museum.
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One of the most famous artifacts from Mawangdui were the silk funeral banners; the T-shaped banners were draped on the coffin of Tomb no. 1. The banners depicted the Chinese abstraction of the cosmos and the afterlife at the time of the western Han Dynasty. A silk banner of similar style and function were found in Tomb no. 3 on the coffin of Lady Dai's son.
The Mawangdui Silk Texts (Chinese: 馬王堆帛書; pinyin: Mǎwángduī Bóshū) are texts of Chinese philosophical and medical works written on silk and found at Mawangdui in China in 1973. They include the earliest attested manuscripts of existing texts such as the I Ching, two copies of the Tao Te Ching, one similar copy of Strategies of the Warring States and a similar school of works of Gan De and Shi Shen. Scholars arranged them into silk books of 28 kinds. Together they count to about 120,000 words covering military strategy, mathematics, cartography and the six classical arts of ritual, music, archery, horsemanship, writing and arithmetic.[1]
