Over 140 rare cultural relics from Sichuan's Sanxingdui and Jinsha, two Bronze Age ruins from the ancient kingdom of Shu, were brought to Beijing's Poly Art Museum to give audiences a glimpse into ancient China's diversified culture. The exhibition kicked off on July 29 and will last until August 31.

The exhibition is the first time that the cultural relics from Sanxingdui Museum and Jinsha Museum have been shown together. The items on show include carved jade, gold, bronze, stone and ivory artifacts. They are brilliant examples of the flourishing culture of the ancient kingdom of Shu, a prehistoric civilization far away from the Yellow River which existed some 3,000 to 5,000 years ago.

Shu is the ancient name of Sichuan, one of the provinces that have the longest history and most brilliant culture in China. Sanxingdui, in Guanghan, 40 km from Chengdu in SW China's Sichuan Province, is recognized as one of the greatest archeological finds of the 20th century. Jinsha Site at the west suburb of Chengdu is another remarkable archeological find after Sanxingdui. Both Sanxingdui and Jinsha ruins provide evidence to the theory that the Yellow River was not the sole starting point of Chinese civilization.

Bronze human head with gold leaf

Width: 19.6 cm, Height: 42.5 cm.

Unearthed in Pit 2 at Sanxingdui

This bronze human head seems to wear a gold mask, which is applied in a thin layer to the front of the head, but not to the eyes and eyebrows. Among the forty-plus heads found in Pit 2 at Sanxingdui, only two had a gold leaf. When they were found, people immediately associated them with those of ancient Egypt and West Asia, where gold masks were often used to cover faces of dead kings and thought to bring them an eternal afterlife.

Are the gold masks at Sanxingdui alien objects? Some suggest they might be the result of the influence from Egypt and West Asia; while some believe they are not masks at all, but merely facial ornaments, and they may have served to show status different from other heads.