Alien-like metallic mask sculptures made from gold and bronze stare mysteriously at the viewers of an exhibition on display at the Hong Kong Palace Museum. These masks vary in shape and are towered over by a 9ft tall bronze statue with the same sculptural features depicting sharp angular eyes,
These 3,000-year-old artifacts, which were dubbed "Faces of Sanxingdui," may resemble that of Mayan or Aztec origin, but are actually dug out from an archaeological ruin called "Sanxingdui" located in the Chengdu Plain of China.
The dig site, whose name can be translated into "three-star mound," had not been discovered until recently in the 1920s when a farmer accidentally came into contact with it while digging for irrigation. There, an ancient city was found comprising a residential area, sacrificial pits, and ancestral tombs, all of which are enclosed by a high-standing mud wall.
Archaeologists say the city may have been established around 2,800 to 4,800 years ago before it was abandoned around 800 BC due to a yet-to-be-discovered reason. Additionally, the site where the city was found was thought to be left by a long-mythologized civilization from Southwestern China called the "Shu Kingdom."
A general view shows the Hong Kong Palace Museum during the opening day in Hong Kong on July 3, 2022.BERTHA WANG/AFP via Getty Images
'Shu,' the Kingdom From Myths and Legends
The "Shu Kingdom" was believed to have emerged from the Sichuan basin in the lowland region of China during the Bronze Age. It was also maintained to have developed away from the Yellow River Valley societies, which is traditionally considered to be where the whole of Chinese civilization came from.
Its citizens were thought to have been extremely talented craftsmen who masterfully manipulated bronze, jade, gold, and ceramics to depict magnificent beasts, kings, and even gods into statues that characteristically had protruding eyes and large ears.
A collective 120 artifacts of this nature are currently on display in the Hong Kong Palace Museum, a majority of which were only recently dug out around 2019 and 2022. These sculptures curiously predate even that of the Terracotta Army, which is a collection of clay statues depicting China's first Emperor Qin Shi Huang's army.
In a statement to CNN, an assistant curator at the Hong Kong Museum, Wang Shengyu shared how the "Sanxingdui" artifacts were amazingly innovative and artistic compared to the products being made in China during its time.
"You can tell that it's very sculptural and very artsy," Wang said.
Information about the "Shu Kingdom" remains scantily available outside what was discovered in the "Sanxingdui" dig site. The only references are from myths and legends, one of which refers to a Shu king named "Can Cong" who had eyes that "bulged." This may explain why so many of the artifacts depicted protruding eyes.
