To welcome in the Year of the Snake, here’s a painting of Fuxi and Nüwa on a ‘hemp’ textile, which was hung on the ceiling of a tomb chamber at Astana Cemetery, Turpan, Xinjiang (PRC).
Turpan was a prosperous, multiethnic oasis trade centre during the middle of the first millennium CE, when expansionist Tibetan, Turk, and Han Chinese empires competed for dominion over the surrounding Tarim Basin.
‘Chinatown’ was the name for Turpan among the Sogdians, the urbane and highly literate and numerate city folk crucial to the commerce of Central Asia, who mostly practiced Mazdaism (Zoroastrianism), as well as Manichaeism, Christianity, or Buddhism.
The Silk Roads Programme at UNESCO provides the following info:
This painting was discovered at the Astana Graves, which was the main burial site for aristocrats of the Turpan region from the 3rd – 8th Centuries.
The two conjoined figures are Fuxi and Nüwa, a brother and sister who, according to a Chinese foundation myth, were the only survivors of a great flood.
Charged with repopulating the world, Fuxi and Nüwa created vast numbers of clay figures, which they were able to bring to life with some divine assistance.
The Turpan area was introduced to Chinese Han culture in its early history, so burial objects discovered in the region often display a strong Chinese influence.
In this painting the subject matter may be Chinese but the faces of Fuxi and Nüwa have the features of Central Asian people.
The iconic figures are outlined with clear brush strokes and colored with thick red and white pigments. They are depicted with human upper bodies, but their lower bodies are serpentine. They are holding a compass and a ruler (respectively), which are symbols related to the traditional Chinese understanding of the universe, in which Heaven is round and the Earth is square. Behind them are the sun, the moon, and various constellations, as a microcosm of the universe.
The painting has several tiny holes along the edges, which are probably nail holes from when it was tacked onto a ceiling. The painting lacks details, but the vivid colors and balanced composition make it a notable piece of art, while the subject matter makes it a valuable archeological artifact.
