“This eleventh Anyang expedition, in the spring of 1935, can be taken in retrospect as the climax of our field work. The financial costs were great, but, more impressive, the results were the richest. The expedition represented the best-organized team work and also the highest executive efficiency. More important for the general public, the achievements successfully confirmed the truth that scientific archaeology not only promotes verifiable knowledge, but also provides an assured means to find buried treasures and give them legal protection.” (Li Chi, Anyang, p.79)

From 1928 to 1937, the IHP conducted fifteen seasons of excavations of ruins of Yin in Anyang, Henan province. Among them, the 10^th to 12^th excavations, led by Liang Ssu-yung (1905–1954), centered on the royal burial sites in Hsi-pei-kang. Liang stated: “[We] hope to be able to find one thousand graves here, so the site is called “One Thousand Tombs”. Whether a pit or tomb, they will start from 1,001.” As predicted, ten large tombs, one “large square pit,” and more than 1,200 tombs smaller in scale were excavated. The tomb registered as no. 1 is Royal Tomb M1001, which was excavated under the direction of Liu Yao (courtesy name Zhaolin, later Yin Da, 1906–1983).

Royal Tomb M1001, compared to other royal burial sites in Hsi-pei-kang, is relatively early and larger in terms of size and number of unearthed artifacts. Although the tomb had repeatedly been looted and damaged, an astonishing array of exquisitely produced artifacts were discovered in the pits left by looters, among which the most remarkable are the marble sculptures of various animals such as an anthropomorphic figure with a tiger head, a standing owl, two crouching tigers joined at their hips, and this pair of ornaments with two owl heads. According to the field photographs taken by Liang and Liu, the two marble ornaments were unearthed at the depths of 9.6 and 9.4 meters in the burial pit on March 30 and April 15, 1935, respectively. The fact that they were not found together indicates the degree to which the tomb had been looted. To prohibit rampant tomb robbing, the Nationalist government required all parties engaged in excavation work to apply for a license, and the IHP thus applied for license no. 1, namely “Artifact Excavation and Acquisition License,” for the 11^th excavation.

This pair of Marble Pole Ornaments with Two Owl Heads on Opposing Sides is of remarkable design and the only example of its kind excavated from the Yinxu, leading to its categorization as a “national treasure” on June 30, 2009, in accordance with the Cultural Heritage Preservation Act. The two artifacts are identical in form, each with a beaked owl head on both the front and back sides. The protruding upper beak, carved to be highly convex, curls inward. The owl’s horn, ears, eyes, and lower beak are rendered in bas-relief, and each eye has been incised to form the character mu (“eye”). There are plain surface on the top or bottom surfaces, with the top being diamond-shaped and the bottom being oval. A hole shows signs of drilling through the center of each piece, possibly used to attach the artifact to a shaft or other wood structure as ornamentation. Considering the looted state of the burial pit, the contexts and actual usage of Marble Pole Ornaments still elude us.

A similar form of marble owl ornament with a convex beak curling inward was also found at Tomb M1002 at Hsi-pei-kang, but they—nine in total—are all smaller in size and one-sided carved with heights ranging from 6.8 to 10.2 centimeters. Resembling Marble Pole Ornaments, the upper beak is highly convex with the remainder of the face being flat; moreover, each eye is incised as mu, and the horn, ears, and other motifs are likewise ground reduction engraved. Except for a groove that seemingly functions as a slit for the purposes of ornamentation, the back is unremarkable. Ultimately, these single-sided marble sculptures of a beaked owl are smaller, and their carving techniques are not as elaborate nor as varied as those of Marble Pole Ornaments.

From April 1 to 23, 1937, Academia Sinica participated in the Second National Fine Art Exhibition held at the then newly built National Art Museum in Nanjing by the Ministry of Education. Liang Ssu-yung, who oversaw the proposed exhibit on the Yinxu, organized the unearthed artifacts into eleven categories and authored the “Yinxu Excavation Exhibition Catalogue,” which was distributed at the venue—the most concise report on the fieldwork at that time. The artifacts on display from Royal Tomb M1001 included Marble Sculpture of a Standing Owl, Marble Sculpture of a Kneeling Anthropomorphic Figure with a Tiger Head, and Marble Pole Ornaments with Two Owl Heads on Opposing Sides. After viewing the exhibit, scholar Hu Houxuan (1911–1995) highly praised the vividness of the marble sculptures from Yinxu: “Before discovering these three-dimensional stone carvings at the Yinxu, we were only aware that the earliest stone carvings in China dated no earlier than the Han dynasty and were limited to a kind of relief carving.” He then continued to marvel at the number of unearthed sculptures, a truly astonishing discovery.

In 1967, the IHP collaborated with the National Palace Museum to display artifacts from Tomb M1001 at Yinxu. Among the exhibits, the unearthed marble sculptures were undoubtedly of the highlight. Then in celebration of the 80th anniversary of the IHP in 2008, the well-received “Hsi-pei-kang Tomb M1001: Special Exhibition for the 80th Anniversary of the Anyang Excavation Project” was organized which featured stone carvings and other artifacts unearthed at Tomb M1001 and other burial sites at Yinxu. And now, it is time for Marble Pole Ornaments with Two Owl Heads on Opposing Sides to take center stage at the Approaching National Treasures special exhibition of the MIHP.

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Appearing in the catalogue of the MIHP, Marble Pole Ornaments with Two Owl Heads on Opposing Sides is now featured as a hand-illustrated watercolor in the “National Treasures: Notebook” series.