Gyeongju Day 3

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Fairly quiet day today (and no photos I'm afraid). I headed off (in the drizzle) for the Gyeongju National Museum, where all the treasures unearthed in the Silla tombs have been carted off to and displayed. For the most part, the excavation of the tombs didn't start until the 1970s (the first royal tomb was discovered when the "hill" was levelled in preparation for building works. Starting so late means that the excavation was highly organised and carefully documented at each stage.

The National Museum is split into three buildings: the archeological building, which contains a collection of the most breath-taking artefacts from the various Silla royal tombs, the Buddhist art building and the Anapji building, which contains a selection of the artefacts recovered from the Anapji pond, which was the site of a Silla palace.

The artefacts from the tombs were simply stunning in their beauty and craftsmanship. There was a lot of elaborate gold jewelery - with twists and rings and bangles that would easily be popular today. Apparently, the Silla went in for pendants (which were hung like donkeys' ears from either side of a crown or headpiece) and long, dangling earings. A motif I kept seeing was comma-shaped glass or jade, which were hung from pendants or necklaces. This abundance of jewelery was what made it possible to identify the tombs as made for royalty, although it has not always been possible to identify the monarch in question.

I learnt that there were about five different words for 'king' during the Silla period, including a word that meant priest, one that meant chieftan and one that simply meant "special person", which rather tickled me.

It seems that social rank and respect during the Silla dynasty transferred from parent to child, the child automatically inheriting his parents' status at birth. This meant that a king's child was buried with his own child-sized crown, even if he predeceased his father.

Ducks made another appearance in beautifully shaped jugs and jars. I am starting to think that either Korea is obsessed with ducks or I am. I seem to see them everywhere! And there were lots of roof tiles, with various images (often of faces or people or animals/dragons - but not ducks, this time).

I continue to be impressed with the beauty and complexity of the objects I have seen and also with their state of preservation. There were definitely moments when I seriously doubted whether I was seeing the original or a clever reconstruction, but I was assured it was the original.

The Buddhist art building I found less fascinating, although I did stop to admire the beautiful fabric creases skillfully carved onto the various Buddha and guardian statues (an appreciation that I feel has been drilled into me during my History of Art classes on my year abroad where my professors spoke - at length - on the Renaissance artists' repeated attempts to recapture the lost skill of the Greek and Roman artists in correctly painting/sculpting creases in clothes. Who, quite frankly, knew that creases were so difficult to reproduce?).

Finally, the Anapji building had a nice layout but was otherwise less impressive than the archeological building. Plus there was a lot of pottery. (Any vain impulse I might ever have had about becoming an archeologist (Indiana Jones style, of course) was quickly squashed once I realised quite how much time archeologists spend getting excited about baked clay).

After the museum, I headed briefly to Bomunho Lake, where all the five-star hotels Gyeongju boasts of are clustered around a quite beautiful lake. At least, I assume it was beautiful - there wasn't much visibility by this stage, so I took a short stroll next to the lakeside (plus umbrella) then caught the bus back to the hostel.

I met up with some other travellers (an Aussie, a Canadian and an American) for Korean barbecue for the evening. I have had Korean barbecue outside of Korea, but until today had never sampled it in Korea, mainly because they are loathe to serve only one person. It was great fun, and delicious (and cheap!) so I am glad I got to try the real thing.

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