Gangseojungmyo, a Goguryeo Mural Tomb unveiled to the World

Gangseojungmyo, or the Middle Tomb of Gangseo, is one of the three great Goguryeo tombs located at the center of a large paddy field in front of Sammyo-ri, Gangseo-guyeok, Pyeongannam-do. The three tombs, each called Gangseodaemyo, Gangseojungmyo and Gangseosomyo, had been regarded as the royal tombs until the early 20th century and annual memorial rites had been held under the charge of the magistrate of Gangseo-gun. It was after 1902 when a magistrate of Gangseo-gun named Yi woo-yeong got into the two larger tombs to discover mural paintings that the tomb came to be known to the outside world. An excavation and research of the tomb in 1912 revealed that they were the tombs of Goguryeo, and the photographs and illustrations made during the survey of the year have played an important role in illuminating the details of the tombs including their dimension and structure. The mural paintings of the Gangseojungmyo’s burial chamber made the tomb included as the Goguryeo’s major archaeological heritage. The tomb has recently been inscribed on the UNESCO’s World Cultural Heritage List and become a subject for a research program jointly conducted by South and North Korea for the elucidation of its cultural significance and scientific preservation.

 

 

A World painted on Stone Walls of Gangseojungmyo

The mural paintings in Gangseojungmyo were directly painted on the stone wall. The southern wall with the entrance is painted with a pair of red phoenixes while each side of the other three walls is filled with a large image of blue dragon, white tiger and black tortoise-serpent respectively without background. On the ceiling, there are a large lotus flower with a pair of phoenixes on south and north and the sun and the moon on east and west. The stones supporting the ceiling stone are also lavishly decorated with lotus blossoms with vines. The general artistic atmosphere of the chamber shows elegant dynamism rather than extravagance, and the use of colors, red, white, yellow, green and black as well as brown which forms the basic color is impressively effective. Experts conjecture that the painters used cinnabar for red, white lead for white, ochre for yellow, verdigris for green and carbon ink stick for black. The murals exhibited here were reproductions made in 1912 when the tomb was excavated.

 

  

A Gaze on the Life after Death

Goguryeo people believed that the life they led in this world would continue in the world that would come after death. That is why they tried to create a similar living environment in the interior of a grave via mural paintings so that the deceased could continue their life in the same manner they had in this world. At the same time they also regarded that the next world would be completely different from this world as shown by the murals depicting the heavenly world resided by all kinds of divine beings.

 

On the other hand, the ancient East Asian people believed that the soul of a human consisted of the two different, though closely related, forces, hon and baek. Death then meant separation of the two forces from each other, letting hon travel back to the heavenly world and baek to the underworld. The murals are a symbolic expression of the two world each resided by hon and baek after the separation following the death of a human being. It was during the period when the world after death was perceived both as real and transcendental worlds that the Four Guardian Deities began to appear on the walls and the stones supporting the ceiling of a burial chamber as divine beings representing constellations forming the heavenly world and the guardians of four cardinal directions. After the 6th century, however, the four guardians came to play a central part as protectors of a tomb, reflecting that the world beyond for the Goguryeo people in this period was a more unreal, abstract and homogeneous one.

  

Blue Dragon     

The blue dragon painted on the eastern wall of the Gangseojungmyo’s burial chamber is characterized by a dynamic position of rushing towards the south with the left foot raising high. It features a slim and long, S-shaped body, tail soaring in the shape of staircase, open, flame-shaped wings, fine hairs blown backwards by the wind behind the neck and legs, large ears and thin horns. The body is covered with no scales and, instead, lavishly embellished with three stripes of different vivid colors, red, green and yellow.

 

The blue dragon is the guardian of the east, and has been admired along with the white tiger as a protector against all evil forces. The earliest perception of the animals in ancient China can be found via a mound of shells in the shape of dragons and tigers discovered beside a body buried at the Chinese Neolithic tomb. The archaeological findings show that the animals had already begun to be regarded as a guardian of the dead since 6,000 years ago.  

 

 

 

White Tiger    

The White Tiger painted on the western wall of the Gangseojungmyo’s burial chamber features large, protruded eyes and the eyebrows expressed in an exaggerated manner to look like the bird’s feathers, all contributing to the creation of a wild and fantastic atmosphere. The body of this divine beast is decorated with a wavy pattern at the back, leopard dot patterns at the sides and the reptile abdomen. Like the Blue Dragon, the tiger is depicted in a posture of howling and rushing towards the southern entrance, a slim and long S-shaped body, tail coiling up in the shape of staircase and a pair of wings open like flames.

 

It is the guardian of the west and, along with the blue dragon, was regarded as a divine being expelling evil forces.  

 

 

 

Black Tortoise-Serpent    

The black tortoise-serpent painted on the northern wall of the Gangseo- jungmyo’s burial chamber appears a comparatively smaller than other guardian deities on a mountain of several peaks, large and small. The image of the mythical animal features a serpent coiling the body of a tortoise and looking at each other. Both the tortoise, featuring the shape of an ordinary land animal with a shell with beehive pattern covering the back, and the serpent, whose body is covered with no scales and decorated with wavy patterns, lack the kinetic element. The mountain peaks under the animals display volume expressed with the use of lines in various thickness and the color of light brown. There are rocks and trees scattered along the ridges depicted in red. As the guardian of the north, the black tortoise-serpent was, along with the red phoenix, in charge of the harmony between yin and yang, the two opposing cosmic forces. The concept of the animal is known to have formed before the Han Dynasty, but the shape we know of today, which is marked by the unity between a tortoise and serpent, first appeared during the period although the traditional of depicting it as a single tortoise continued to be maintained in the following periods.   

 

 

Red Phoenix    

The southern wall of the burial chamber in Gangseojungmyo, or the Middle Tomb of Gangseo, contains a mural painting of a pair of red phoenixes facing each other with open wings, a single tail feather gently curved upwards and a red bead in the mouth. Each bird features an elegant, well-defined posture and vivid red color.

 

The red phoenix is a mythical bird ancient East Asian people believed to have been the guardian of the south and, along with the Black Tortoise-Serpent, in charge of the harmony between yin and yang, the two opposing cosmic forces. The birds depicted on the walls of ancient Goguryeo tombs appear as a pair facing each other each featuring the protruded breast, fully opening wings, feathered crest, beak comparable to that of roosters and the wings and the tail feather disproportionately larger compared with the body. Some of the remained murals show striking similarity to a rooster, but experts agreed that the bird should be conceived as the mythical birds, widely praised in ancient China as the noblest of all feathered animals.

 

 

Painted Ceiling 

The stone slab forming the ceiling of the burial chamber of Gangseojungmyo is painted with a fully bloomed lotus flower surrounded by the sun and the moon in the east and west, a pair of phoenixes(Bonghuang)in the north and south and lotus blossoms at four corners. The sun and the moon contain in them the symbols representing each, the three-legged black bird and toad. The latter animal features an abstract image looking like an insect while there are around the Sun painted in red simple cloud designs. The phoenixes in the south and north display a similar form to that of red phoenix(Jujak) except that they have a forked tail feather. Each of the four corners is arranged with one quarter of a lotus flower surrounded by with honeysuckle vines. Both the expression and colors are rather plain but the brushwork and the layout are delightfully simple and exquisite. The ceiling decorated with the lotus, sun and moon is characteristic feature of the Goguryeo mural tombs built before the 6th century.