Home » Museum

Crystal Cup: Unraveling the Mystery of the Age of Hangzhou City

Mar 11, 2010

Crystal Cup

Name: Crystal Cup
中文名: 水晶杯
Dated to:475~221B.C.
Culture: Warring States Period
Unearthed: 1990@Warring States Tomb, Shitang Village, Banshan Town, Hangzhou, Zhejiang
Current Location: Cultural Relics Archaeological Research Institute Of Hangzhou, Zhejiang
Dimension: height: 15.4cm

Open mouth, slope wall, round bottom, outward circle foot. a plain design with no decorations; transparent; and surface was well polished; the middle and bottom of the vessel has natural sponge-like crystals.

A Precious Drinkware

This cup is a treasure drinkware made of high quality natural Quartz crystal. Its amazing production techniques and technological level is rare among domestic relics.

The Crystal Cup is the oldest and the largest crystal cup among archaeological finds in China. It is very similar to a contemporary glass.

Unraveling the Mystery of the Age of Hangzhou City

The exact age of Hangzhou City is still unknown. People always say Hangzhou City has a long history of about 2000+ years. However, 2200 years ago, east to West Lake, where Hangzhou City is located now, is still under water. So the ancient Hangzhou city should be originated in the hills to the west and south of West Lake.

With the discovery of this crystal cup, which is a precious vessel that symbolizes the owner’s unusually high social status, historians hypothesis that Banshan Town region (where this cup was unearthed) might be the original location of ancient Hangzhou City.

[Forbidden Treasure of China Series]
This is the 15th of 64 culture heritages that the government of China forbids to exhibit abroad. The complete list is here. In Chinese.

[Chinese Keywords]
国家一级文物 禁止出境



Rate this:
1 Star2 Stars3 Stars4 Stars5 Stars (No Ratings Yet)
Loading...
Comments are closed.