National Institute of Informatics - Digital Silk Road Project
Digital Archive of Toyo Bunko Rare Books

> > > >
Color New!IIIF Color HighRes Gray HighRes PDF   Japanese English
0383 Ruins of Desert Cathay : vol.1
Ruins of Desert Cathay : vol.1 / Page 383 (Color Image)

New!Citation Information

doi: 10.20676/00000213
Citation Format: Chicago | APA | Harvard | IEEE

OCR Text

 

CH. six BURNING OF STUCCO RELIEVOS 231

that this complete decay had been greatly aided by a destructive factor of another kind. The general reddish colour of the clay in débris and wall remnants alike, the discovery of small fragments of completely charred wood, and a number of other indications I cannot here set forth in detail made it clear that the shrine had first suffered by a great conflagration. The heat produced by it had sufficed to give a terra-cotta-like colour and consistency to the smaller a/Wiqué relievos of the walls, originally (like those of Rawak) merely of sun-dried clay, as well as to such detached fragments as fingers, ears, etc., manifestly belonging to life - size sculptures of the same material. But it had not been great enough to protect the clay masses of the sculptures themselves by a sort of regular

burning. Excepting those fragments, they had completely decayed under atmospheric influences while exposed, and subsequently through moisture when the ground was levelled and brought under cultivation. That some time had elapsed between the first destruction of the shrine and the complete levelling of its walls was proved by the fact of a stratum of loess-like soil about one and a half feet thick intervening between the débris layer over the original ground and a second thinner layer of débris with many small relievos.

This same accumulation of fine alluvial dust still proceeds all over the oases wherever there is enough moisture to retain it, and, as I have explained before, steadily raises the ground level. On the top of it fell the hardened relievos when the walls were finally pulled down to make room for some later structure or for cultivation, and fresh layers of loess had protected them until occupation finally ceased, and the ground was abandoned to the desert dunes. Wind erosion, ceaselessly proceeding between the shifting dunes, had now begun to lay bare again this upper layer of relievos on the exposed loess surface ; and to it was due the discovery of the ruin in the midst of these vast ` Tati ' areas, with pottery débris coming down probably to much later periods.

Whatever objects might have survived the combined effects of burning and moisture must have been long