Broken Pieces Reassembled

The highlight of my travels in China was the visit to the Terracotta Army site, where thousands of clay soldiers and horses were unearthed beginning in 1974.

Today’s challenge from Dutch Goes the Photo is ‘Broken’, which brought to mind the restoration of the famous terra-cotta figurines. I was fascinated with the work being done to match heads, arms, and legs with the correct bodies in this underground mausoleum.

My pictures aren’t as clear as the ones you can find on the Wikipedia website, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Terracotta_Army).   so I recommend you visit there in order to get a complete history and some fabulous photos.

But, in case you want to put that off, here are some shots I took of a few of the unearthed sculptures.

Visit more ‘broken’  posts at: https://dutchgoesthephoto.net/2017/04/11/tuesday-photo-challenge-broken/

Here is the first part of the information at Wikipedia about the Terra-cotta Army:

“The Terracotta Army (Chinese: 兵马俑; literally: “Soldier-and-horse funerary statues”) is a collection of terracotta sculptures depicting the armies of Qin Shi Huang, the first Emperor of China. It is a form of funerary art buried with the emperor in 210–209 BCE and whose purpose was to protect the emperor in his afterlife.

The figures, dating from approximately the late third century BCE,^[1] were discovered in 1974 by local farmers in Lintong District, Xi’an, Shaanxi province. The figures vary in height according to their roles, with the tallest being the generals. The figures include warriors, chariots and horses. Estimates from 2007 were that the three pits containing the Terracotta Army held more than 8,000 soldiers, 130 chariots with 520 horses and 150 cavalry horses, the majority of which remained buried in the pits nearby Qin Shi Huang’s mausoleum.^[2]Other terracotta non-military figures were found in other pits, including officials, acrobats, strongmen and musicians.”