📗 Libro en inglés LIFE AND AFTERLIFE IN ANCIENT CHINA

An epic new history of Ancient China told through the prism of a dozen extraordinary tombs The three millennia up to the establishment of the first imperial Qin dynasty in 221 BC cemented many of the distinctive elements of Chinese civilisation still in place today an extraordinarily challenging geography and environment formidable infrastructure a society based on the strict hierarchy of the family a shared written script of characters a cuisine founded on rice and millet a material culture of ceramics bronze silk and jade and a unique concept of the universe in which ancestors continue to exist alongside the living Records of these early achievements and their diverse and unexpected expressions often lie not in written history but in how people marked the end of their lives their dwellings for the afterlife Tombs and the treasures within them are almost the only artefacts to survive from Ancient China their scale and sophistication rivals their equivalents in Ancient Egypt Jessica Rawson one of the most eminent Western scholars of China explores twelve grand tombs each from a specific historical moment and place showing how they reveal wider political dynastic and cultural developments culminating in the lavish ambition of the First Empero