The Figurine Array and the Gate-Guards

Through the cave mouth is a figurine array: 62 figures, 31 pairs, each pair 1.5 meters apart along the tunnel and 1.8 meters apart across it, facing one another all the way to the end of the passageway. The error in the spacing stays under 2 centimeters — whoever set the figures out had measuring tools, and the kiln that fired them could hold a standard size. Anyone capable of that precision 2,000 years ago had to be a kiln under direct imperial control, or a workshop of the same rank as one.

Each stands about 1.72 meters, feet together, hands hanging at the sides, head canted 10 degrees toward the axis of the tunnel. There is no movable structure at the joints; each was fired in one piece, set at that angle in the firing. The outer robe is a painted dragon robe, black ground with gold-line edging, and the coiling outline across the chest has largely flaked away. In the first 10 pairs the coil runs clockwise; from the eleventh pair on it turns counterclockwise. Scrape the edge of the pattern open with a spade tip and the clay beneath both kinds is the same pale cream, one kiln and one batch of material, and the counterclockwise set was painted on later.

Struck with the handle of a sapper spade they ring long and hollow. The belly gives the lowest note, the crown of the head the shortest. The clay surface runs about 35 degrees, a good margin above the surrounding stone, as though something inside were holding a nearly constant temperature. In the exact center of each crown is a round opening 8 centimeters across, the cut marks along its rim 4 to 5 centimeters apart, and the opening is at most 3 years old.

A further 1.5 meters past the end of the array stands another pair, the gate-guard figures, made to a wholly different pattern: the outer garment is plain dark-brown hemp with no dragon design, the eyelids have the normal sculpted layering, the head is not canted but looks straight ahead, and there is no opening in the crown. Each holds a real weapon in its right hand, one a long-hafted bronze dagger-axe, the other a straight-edged bronze sword; the bronze carries the green rust of its years, but the edges are clean, as if kept up over a long time. They guard a bluestone door of 2 tons in weight and 0.4 meters in thickness, with 21 steps leading down in front of it, each step marked on the left-hand wall with a numeral in Han clerical script, counting down from 20 to 0.

What is truly wrong with these figures only shows when you come close and hold a lamp up to them — their eyes, the pupils carved as a single vertical line.