Gold Belt and Pendants from Geumgwanchong
Fifth century
A Silla king was buried in gold from head to foot, and after the crown the most spectacular piece was the belt. What survives here is the gold part of it: a long chain of openwork plaques, each pierced with a heart-shaped design, that were once riveted to a leather or cloth strap, and from them hang seventeen pendants of different lengths that swing down to the knees. Every pendant ends in a miniature object: a fish, a curved jade bead, a small knife, a pair of tweezers, a medicine bottle, a whetstone, a bag. In the case, laid out flat, the whole thing looks like a glittering fringe.
The idea of hanging useful things from a belt comes from the horse riding peoples of the steppe, whose nomads carried their tools on their bodies, and Silla nobles adopted it as a symbol of that heritage long after they had settled in cities. By the time this belt was made the objects had become purely symbolic, tiny, fragile and made of gold. Look at the fish, which represent abundance, and at the curved jade beads that echo the pendants on the crown. The plaques of the belt itself are made of sheet gold hammered thin and pierced with a chisel, the same technique used for the crown, and the two were almost certainly made in the same royal workshop.
The belt was found lying across the waist of the person buried in the Gold Crown Tomb in 1921, together with gold earrings, bracelets, rings and shoes, and gilt-bronze horse trappings. It is displayed with the crown so that you can imagine the complete costume. Look for the belts from other tombs in the same gallery and compare the pendants; each burial seems to have had its own set, like a signature.
Did You Know? The pendants include a tiny gold medicine bottle and a set of tweezers, which suggests that even in death a Silla king was expected to look after himself.
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