Product Description

Chinese Liangzhu culture jade tube “cong” decorated with daity heads on four coeners.

Liangzhu culture ritual jade object. Zhejiang province, yuhang country.

This jade Cong is in the form of squat tube, looking from above rather looks like a jade disk. The corner display four sections with eight penals containing simplified carved design of the face of deities formed at the outer corners. This design is probably the “mystic emblem” worshipped by the Liangzhu people and is a classic Liangzhu decoration. While excavation, it was mostly find lying upright at the lower level of the skull of the tomb’s occupant.

Brown and russet inclusions and veins.

Size: 5 cm high, 4.25 x 4.25 cm wide.

Note:

The cong is cylindrical on the inside and square on the outside and used as a ritual object in early sacrifices to the earth god. Early chinese civilisation believed that the square and cylindrical aspects of the cong represents heaven and earth. The central tube represents a conduit between the two.

During the mid and late Neolithic period, the jade cong appears in large numbers specially in the Liangzhu culture of the Zhejiang area, the Shixia culture of Guangdong, the Taosi culture of Shanxi and the Qijia culture of northwest China.The cong of the Liangzhu culture are the most developed one.

Large quantities of jade cong of many types have been found in every tomb and at every site of the Liangzhu culture of 5,300 to 4,000 years ago.

Jade cong are evenly decorated with patterns of animal heads entered on four-cornered line decided into four panels, the decoration following the contours of the jade to produce identically patterned panels. Some has animal face patterns,finely incised figures of deities and cloud and thunder patterns.