Owl, commonly known as owl, is one of the most widely distributed birds in the world. The owl is full of mystery in the eyes of humans because of its biological habits of rodents as its main food, day and night, good at smelling the breath of dead and rotting animals, and its terrible chirping sound and silent when flying.
From being worshipped to being disgusted, and then being used as a funeral vessel for life, how did the owl achieve "laid-off reemployment"?
Red and green glazed pottery owl pots, pottery, Han Dynasty cultural relics, both pots are 175 cm, abdominal circumference 3400 cm, unearthed from the Han Tomb of Sijian Ditch in Jiyuan, Henan Province, now in the Henan Museum.
These two owl pots are the same size and size, both are clay red pottery, with a reddish-brown glaze on the head, a green glaze on the back and belly, a yellow-green glaze on the wings, and a feather-like ornamentation with a flat bottom.
The whole pot is the image of an owl standing still, with a round and large face, round eyes, looking ahead, ears slightly asymmetrically erected, as if on alert, with a short and thick beak and a lower hook at the front; The tail lands on the ground, the body part is molded with wings and claws, and the chest and wings are molded with feathers, which are wavy and lifelike.
The head of the owl pot and the body of the pot are not one, the body of the bird is the body of the pot, the inside is hollow, the head is the lid of the pot, there is a mother and son mouth, can be rotated or closed with the lid of the body of the pot, the idea is ingenious.
The ancients pursued "death as life", believing that people have souls, and that the soul does not die after death, but leaves the body to enter another world, and the tomb becomes a place for the soul to live and live.
In order to allow the deceased to be fed, clothed, and warm after death, the standard of the tomb is often the same as that of the human world, and it is also equipped with houses, food, and various daily necessities, hoping that the deceased can continue to enjoy the glory and wealth of the world.
But the tomb is buried deep underground, and there is a problem that has to be considered: what if the afterlife world is the same as the real world, and there are rats that eat food and disturb the tomb owner's sleep?
And so the owl pot appeared. The owl pot is based on an owl that is good at preying on mice, and the interior is hollow, meaning that it is a pottery vessel that holds grain, in order to prevent rodent infestation and make the tomb owner live a prosperous and worry-free life in the underworld.
The terracotta owl pot is covered with feather details.
Expert interpretation
According to Zhang Ying of the Social Education Service Department of the Henan Museum, the evolution of the owl's image in China has roughly gone through a process from being worshiped as an animal to being regarded as an ominous evil bird.
As early as the Neolithic period, the owl had a very high status and was regarded as a sacred animal. The ancestors living in the Yellow River and Yangtze River basins made sacrificial vessels of different materials by imitating the form of the owl. After entering the Shang Dynasty, the image of the owl became more prominent and widely appeared on various materials such as bronze, jade, stone and pottery, with religious mysteries.
During the Warring States period, the owl gradually evolved into a symbol of **. "The Book of Songs: The Owl" cloud: "The owl, the owl, not only destroys my son, but does not destroy my room." It shows that people had a sense of disgust and terror for owls at that time. In the Central Plains of the Han Dynasty, people believed that owls were ominous and unfilial, and would bring bad luck and disasters to people. The disgust and fear of the owl's "unfilial piety" and "disloyalty" were probably the main reasons for the large number of owls killed in the early Han Dynasty.
By the late Western Han Dynasty, due to a large number of hunting, the number of owls in Dongjun and the surrounding areas decreased sharply. The owl has decreased sharply, and the number of rats as the food of the owl has increased, and the Ming ware in the Han tomb in this period is mostly with the burial model of the pottery for life, and people make hollow owl pots according to the characteristics of the owl that is good at catching rats, hoping to eliminate the rodent infestation and bless the abundance of food. (Zhengguan News reporter Xu Yitong).
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