Posted on 09/27/2022 3:48:19 PM PDT by SunkenCiv
An art museum collaborates with expert chemists to investigate a Tang dynasty dancing horse.
In order to solve a 1,300-year-old mystery, the Cincinnati Art Museum requested help from a University of Cincinnati scientist.
The Chinese dancing horse sculpture at the museum is so lifelike that it seems to be ready to gallop off its pedestal. However, H ou-mei Sung, an expert in East Asian art, questioned the authenticity of a decorative tassel on the terracotta horse’s forehead that resembled the horn of a mythical unicorn.
Pietro Strobbia, an assistant professor of chemistry at the UC College of Arts and Sciences, was contacted by the museum to help establish if the tassel belonged to the original piece...
Strobbia and his collaborators recently published their findings in the journal Heritage Science.
Sung has seen numerous instances of ancient sculptures honoring the dancing horses that entertained rulers as far back as 202 B.C. But according to her, no others have forehead tassels. Could it have been added at a later time? ...
The dancing horse was donated by a collector to the Cincinnati museum in 1997 and originates from the Tang dynasty, when such sculptures were commissioned specifically for the aim of entombing royalty with them after their deaths, according to Sung.
Dancing horses were trained to move in time with a drumbeat. Sung said Emperor Xuanzong from the eighth century loved horses so much that he had a stable of more than 40,000. For one birthday celebration, he invited a troupe of 400 dancing horses to perform the "Song of the Upturned Cup."
(Excerpt) Read more at scitechdaily.com ...
I’ve got three TANG jars I bought in 1968! A fourth might be from the TANG company.
Now if I could find some Ming to go with Tang.
For space flights.
It’s from too many covid tests
/Sarc..
Many of their conclusions are fairy tales. This is one of them. Real...ma
They act like dancing horses were something out of this world.
I call it a lot of horse shit, if true.
You rang?
The weirdos that go to ‘my little pony’ conventions do too.
and the other three???
The Tang Dynasty is most famous for inventing instant breakfast drinks.
************
The drive to get to the moon was because Tang needed to return to its own kind before its expiration.
One thing I do know - I have a much different definition of lifelike than they do.
“Sung said Emperor Xuanzong from the eighth century loved horses so much that he had a stable of more than 40,000. For one birthday celebration, he invited a troupe of 400 dancing horses to perform the “Song of the Upturned Cup.”
This is one of those statements that make me think ‘are we just spending our lives on earth not knowing what to do and filling it up with wasteful things like this’?
They were brought the gift by ancient astronauts from another planet.
Those are some weird-ass horse proportions.
The humor on this thread is Merciless!
Looking at the way the tail is represented, I’m kinda surprised the mane isn’t braided too.
Or, it’s an actual unicorn and they have weird tails.
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