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74-781: The British Museum Reading Room , situated in the centre of the Great Court of the British Museum , used to be the main reading room of the British Library . In 1997, this function moved to the new British Library building at St Pancras, London , but the Reading Room remains in its original form at the British Museum. Designed by Sydney Smirke and opened in 1857, the Reading Room was in continual use until its temporary closure for renovation in 1997. It

148-601: A close similarity to the figures in terms of their artistic style is that of the later 1st century BCE Central Asian Khalchayan statuary . Li Xiuzhen, senior site archaeologist, also acknowledged the possibility of Hellenistic influences, stating: "we now think the Terracotta Army, the acrobats and the bronze sculptures found on site were inspired by ancient Greek sculptures and art." She later also asserted ultimate Chinese authorship: "the terracotta warriors may be inspired by Western culture, but were uniquely made by

222-541: A hermetically sealed space approximately 100 by 75 metres (328 ft × 246 ft). The tomb remains unopened, possibly due to concerns over preservation of its artifacts. For example, after the excavation of the Terracotta Army, the painted surface present on some terracotta figures began to flake and fade. The lacquer covering the paint can curl in fifteen seconds once exposed to Xi'an's dry air and can flake off in just four minutes. Four main pits approximately 7 m (23 ft) deep have since been uncovered in

296-651: A less stern and militaristic style, and with much smaller statuettes, such as the Western Han Yangjiawan terracotta army (195 BCE) or Yangling terracotta army (141 BCE). The human-sized monumental style of the Qin emperor has thus been observed by scholars to be a relatively short-lived artistic phase which would not reappear until the 4-6th centuries CE with the onset of monumental Buddhist sculpture in China. In 2007, scientists at Stanford University and

370-562: A pillbox hat; helmeted drivers of chariots with more armor protection; spear-carrying charioteers; kneeling crossbowmen or archers who are armored; standing archers who are not; as well as generals and other lower-ranking officers. There are, however, many variations in the uniforms within the ranks: for example, some may wear shin pads while others not; they may wear either long or short trousers, some of which may be padded; and their body armors vary depending on rank, function, and position in formation. There are also terracotta horses placed among

444-448: A serious researcher. The Reading Room was used by a large number of famous figures, including notably Sun Yat-sen , Karl Marx , Oscar Wilde , Friedrich Hayek , Marcus Garvey , Bram Stoker , Mahatma Gandhi , Rudyard Kipling , George Orwell , George Bernard Shaw , Mark Twain , Vladimir Lenin (using the name Jacob Richter), Virginia Woolf , Arthur Rimbaud , Muhammad Ali Jinnah , H. G. Wells , and Arthur Conan Doyle . In 1973,

518-447: Is an earlier library that has also had distinguished users, including Thomas Babington Macaulay , William Makepeace Thackeray , Robert Browning , Giuseppe Mazzini , Charles Darwin , and Charles Dickens . A selection of past exhibitions: In 2013, the Reading Room was again closed to the public, this time indefinitely. With its role as an exhibition space superseded by the newer purpose-built World Conservation and Exhibitions Centre,

592-461: Is conducted each week, at a specific time on a specific day; during the first wave of tours in March and April 2023, tours only ran on Tuesdays at 11:30 am. Visitors are monitored during the tour and are not permitted to borrow books or take photographs in the Reading Room. The British Museum Reading Room is the subject of an eponymous poem, "The British Museum Reading Room", by Louis MacNeice . Much of

666-413: Is located at the foot of Mount Li and built in a pyramidal shape, and is surrounded by two solidly built rammed earth walls with gateway entrances. The necropolis consists of several offices, halls, stables, other structures as well as an imperial park placed around the tomb mound. The warriors stand guard to the east of the tomb. Up to 5 m (16 ft) of reddish, sandy soil had accumulated over

740-770: Is no Greek influence on the Terracotta Army and emphasized the differences in artisanship, construction material, and symbology. Darryl Wilkinson of Dartmouth College has instead argued that the Qin era display of sculptural naturalism, alongside that of the pre-Columbian Moche culture in Peru, indicate that "the Greeks did not invent naturalism" and that "sculptural naturalism is not the product of any one culture's civilizational 'genius. ' " The terracotta army figures were manufactured in workshops by government laborers and local craftsmen using local materials. Heads, arms, legs, and torsos were created separately and then assembled by luting

814-426: Is suspended and made out of papier-mâché . Book stacks built around the reading room were made of iron to take the huge weight and add fire protection. There were forty kilometres of shelving in the stacks prior to the library's relocation to the new site. The Reading Room was officially opened on 2 May 1857 with a 'breakfast' (that included champagne and ice cream ) laid out on the catalogue desks. A public viewing

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888-581: Is the grandest Literary & Scientific institution (not for instruction) in the world. The Reading Room, I told Parker, was a temple to the deification of Bibliology. The writer Bernard Falk (1882–1960) quotes the British historian Thomas Carlyle (1795–1881) as having declared that the Reading Room of the British Museum was a convenient asylum for imbeciles whose friends wished them out of mischief's way. Queen Elizabeth II Great Court The Queen Elizabeth II Great Court , commonly referred to simply as

962-501: Is the largest of the four pits and has eleven parallel corridors, most more than 3 m (10 ft) wide and paved with small bricks with a wooden ceiling supported by large beams and posts. This design was also used for the tombs of nobles and would have resembled palace hallways when built. The wooden ceilings were covered with reed mats and layers of clay for waterproofing, and then mounded with more soil raising them about 2 to 3 m (6 ft 7 in to 9 ft 10 in) above

1036-629: The Advanced Light Source facility in Berkeley, California, reported that powder diffraction experiments combined with energy-dispersive X-ray spectroscopy and micro-X-ray fluorescence analysis showed that the process of producing terracotta figures colored with Chinese purple dye consisting of barium copper silicate was derived from the knowledge gained by Taoist alchemists in their attempts to synthesize jade ornaments. Since 2006, an international team of researchers at

1110-532: The Great Court , is the covered central quadrangle of the British Museum in London. It was redeveloped during the late 1990s to a design by Foster and Partners , from a 1970s design by Colin St John Wilson . The court was opened by Queen Elizabeth II in 2000. The court has a tessellated glass roof, engineered by Buro Happold and built by Waagner-Biro , covering the entire court, and surrounds

1184-806: The Royal Ontario Museum in Toronto. Subsequently, the exhibition traveled to Sweden and was hosted in the Museum of Far Eastern Antiquities between 28 August 2010 and 20 January 2011. An exhibition entitled 'The First Emperor – China's Entombed Warriors', presenting 120 artifacts was hosted at the Art Gallery of New South Wales , between 2 December 2010 and 13 March 2011. An exhibition entitled " L'Empereur guerrier de Chine et son armée de terre cuite " ("The Warrior-Emperor of China and his terracotta army"), featuring artifacts including statues from

1258-501: The UCL Institute of Archaeology have been using analytical chemistry techniques to uncover more details about the production techniques employed in the creation of the Terracotta Army. Using X-ray fluorescence spectrometry of 40,000 bronze arrowheads bundled in groups of 100, the researchers reported that the arrowheads within a single bundle formed a relatively tight cluster that was different from other bundles. In addition,

1332-536: The British Library Act 1972 detached the library department from the British Museum, but it continued to host the now separated British Library in the same Reading Room and building as the museum until 1997. In 1997 the British Library moved to its own specially constructed building next to St Pancras railway station and all the books and shelving were removed. As part of the redevelopment of

1406-548: The British Museum the United Kingdom's top cultural attraction between 2007 and 2008. The exhibition brought the most visitors to the museum since the King Tutankhamun exhibition in 1972. It was reported that the 400,000 advance tickets sold out so fast that the museum extended its opening hours until midnight. According to The Times , many people had to be turned away, despite the extended hours. During

1480-489: The Chinese." Others have argued that such speculations rest on flawed and old Eurocentric ideas that assumed other civilizations were incapable of sophisticated artistry and thus foreign artistry must be seen through Western traditions, with site archaeologist Zhang Weixing stating that "there is no substantial evidence at all" for any such linkage. Raoul McLaughlin, an independent researcher on Roman trade, stated that there

1554-530: The Clore Education Centre and the African galleries (which had been housed at the Museum of Mankind since 1970). The South Portico was largely rebuilt, with two new lifts incorporated for disabled access to the upper levels of the museum. A new gridshell glass roof, designed and built by Austrian specialists Waagner-Biro , was provided over the entire courtyard to create a covered space at

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1628-1032: The First Emperor," was on display at the Pacific Science Center in Seattle, Washington, from 8 April 2017 to 4 September 2017 before traveling to The Franklin Institute in Philadelphia , Pennsylvania, to be exhibited from 30 September 2017 to 4 March 2018 with the addition of augmented reality . An exhibition entitled "China's First Emperor and the Terracotta Warriors" was at the World Museum in Liverpool from 9 February 2018 to 28 October 2018. An exhibition tour of 120 real-size replicas of Terracotta statues

1702-492: The Great Court, the Reading Room was fully renovated and restored, including the papier-mâché ceiling which was repaired to its original colour scheme, having previously undergone radical redecorations (the initial design of the roof was considered excessive at the time). The Reading Room was reopened in 2000, allowing all visitors, not just library ticket-holders, to enter it. It held a collection of 25,000 books focusing on

1776-470: The Museum's global role. Upon the Great Court's opening to the public in 2000, twelve sculptures from the British Museum's collection were installed on the main floor of the concourse: There were initial plans for a new, thirteenth sculpture to be commissioned from Anish Kapoor , but these were scrapped. Terracotta Army The Terracotta Army is a collection of terracotta sculptures depicting

1850-532: The Qin Emperor's tomb mound at Mount Li (Lishan), a region riddled with underground springs and watercourses. For centuries, occasional reports mentioned pieces of terracotta figures and fragments of the Qin necropolis – roofing tiles, bricks and chunks of masonry. This discovery prompted Chinese archaeologists, including Zhao Kangmin , to investigate, revealing the largest pottery figurine group ever found. A museum complex has since been constructed over

1924-603: The Reading Room include Night of the Demon (1957) and in the 2001 Japanese anime OVA Read or Die , the Room is used as a secret entrance to the British Library's fictional "Special Operations Division". In Sir Max Beerbohm 's short story, Enoch Soames , first published in May 1916, an obscure writer makes a deal with the Devil to visit the Reading Room one hundred years in

1998-493: The Reading Room was converted for use as the museum's archive. It was briefly reopened in 2018, but for a series of concerts and not for its original purpose. For the rest of the 2010s and early 2020s, the Reading Room remained closed to the public, and museum officials were in discussions on what to do with the space. In 2023, the Reading Room reopened to the public for guided tours. The tours, which are free, last approximately 20 minutes and must be booked in advance. Only one tour

2072-552: The Taerpo cemetery near Xianyang ( Qin state of the Warring States period ). The rider wears Central Asian , Scythian -style clothing, and his high pointed nose suggests he is a foreigner, but these early statuettes have been argued to lack the naturalistic and realistic quality of the Qin terracota army. The terracotta army left a legacy however, as funeral terracotta armies are known from later dynasties, although in

2146-418: The action of David Lodge 's 1965 novel The British Museum Is Falling Down takes place in the old Reading Room. The 'Glass Ceiling' of Anabel Donald's 1994 novel is the ceiling of the Reading Room, where the denouement is set. Alfred Hitchcock used the Reading Room and the dome of the British Museum as a location for the climax of his first sound film Blackmail (1929). Other movies with key scenes in

2220-536: The age range of 15 to 40 years old, with an average height of around 1.7 meters. Many studies have concentrated on analyzing these workers including craniometric as well as genetic studies, which were conducted to try to understand the workers' origins. According to Duan Qingbo , lead archaeologist and Director of Excavations at the Mausoleum from 1998 to 2006, DNA analysis work on a group of 19 skeletons, in comparison with 33 contemporary Chinese individuals, showed that

2294-436: The area, the largest pit being enclosed by a roofed structure. The Terracotta Army is part of a much larger necropolis. Ground-penetrating radar and core sampling have measured the area to be approximately 98 square kilometers (38 square miles). The necropolis was constructed as a microcosm of the emperor's imperial palace or compound, and covers a large area around the tomb mound of the first emperor. The earthen tomb mound

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2368-529: The armies of Qin Shi Huang , the first emperor of China . It is a form of funerary art buried with the emperor in 210–209 BCE with the purpose of protecting him in his afterlife. The figures, dating from approximately the late 200s BCE, were discovered in 1974 by local farmers in Lintong County , outside Xi'an , Shaanxi, China. The figures vary in height according to their rank, the tallest being

2442-445: The ceiling was decorated with heavenly bodies, below which lay the features of the lands of China which the emperor had unified. Some translations of this passage refer to "models" or "imitations"; however, those words were not used in the original text, which also makes no mention of the terracotta army. Although these elements of Sima Qian's account on the structure of the mausoleum have been seen as credulous in pre-modern assessments,

2516-411: The centre of the museum. The British Library Reading Room at the centre of the courtyard was retained and refurbished for use as the Museum library and information centre. The Reading Room had no outer wall; the book stacks came right up to the back of the Reading Room shelves. So a new outer wall was created to protect the Reading Room, to support the new roof and to conceal the ventilation ducts serving

2590-499: The court is from France , rather than being Portland stone from southern England as agreed in the original contract with the masons. Within the Great Court, there are shops and a café. The court acts as a central linking point for the museum, somewhat like I. M. Pei 's Louvre Pyramid in Paris . The central courtyard of the British Museum was occupied by the British Library until 1997, when it moved to St Pancras . At that time

2664-521: The cultures represented in the museum along with an information centre and the Walter and Leonore Annenberg Centre. In 2007 the books and facilities installed in 2000 were removed, and the Reading Room was relaunched as a venue for special exhibitions, beginning with one featuring China's Terracotta Army . The general library for visitors, Paul Hamlyn Library, was moved to a room accessible through nearby Room 2, but closed permanently on 13 August 2011. This

2738-682: The day of events to mark the Chinese New Year , the crush was so intense that the gates to the museum had to be shut. The Terracotta Army has been described as the only other set of historic artifacts (along with the remnants of the wreck of the RMS Titanic ) that can draw a crowd by the name alone. Warriors and other artifacts were exhibited to the public at the Forum de Barcelona in Barcelona between 9 May and 26 September 2004. It

2812-460: The depiction of the shapes and proportions of the human body. Eleven of such figurines from Pit K9901 have since been subsequently unearthed with seven of them found in a degree of preservation that made them capable of being largely reconstructed from their fragment shards. Since the time of their discovery, the figures have been noted for their exceptional stylistic realism and individualism, with assessments having found that no two figures share

2886-611: The detection of high levels of mercury that were found in the soil of the tomb mound following the discovery of the mausoleum site have since given credence to Sima Qian's account. Additionally, the Emperor is well documented for building monumental statues in human form during his reign, such as the Twelve Metal Colossi , which were a series of contemporaneous statues that are now lost but have been noted in historical records. Later historical accounts have suggested that

2960-491: The earliest industrial use of lathes for polishing. According to a 2022 study, there is statistically no difference between the facial features of terracotta warriors and contemporary Chinese populations, particularly northern and western Chinese populations. However, the issue of terrocotta warriors being potentially deformed and Chinese populations undergoing changes in their facial features due to climate change and dietary factors were not addressed. The first exhibition of

3034-461: The entire courtyard was filled with bookshelves, three storeys high (the "book stacks"). To get from one side of the museum to the other, visitors had to go around. Once the Library had moved out, the book stacks were cleared and the Great Court constructed in this central courtyard. A new 'ground' level was created, a story higher than the original courtyard, with the space below used to accommodate

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3108-527: The exact same features. The earliest note on this aspect was that of 20th century art historian German Hafner who, in 1986, was the first to speculate on a possible Hellenistic link to these sculptures due to the unusual display of naturalism relative to general Qin era sculpture: "the art of the terracotta army originated from Western contact". This idea was also generally supported by Duan Qingbo , site chief archaeologist from 1998 to 2006, though noting that "the only thing" in extant archaeology which may hold

3182-648: The exhibition entitled "The Two Empires". Soldiers and related items were on display from 15 March 2013 to 17 November 2013, at the Historical Museum of Bern . Several Terracotta Army figures were on display, along with many other objects, in an exhibit entitled "Age of Empires: Chinese Art of the Qin and Han Dynasties" at The Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York City from 3 April 2017, to 16 July 2017. An exhibition featuring ten Terracotta Army figures and other artifacts, "Terracotta Warriors of

3256-782: The figures a realistic feel, with eyebrows and facial hair in black and the faces done in pink. However, in Xi'an 's dry climate, much of the color coating would flake off in less than four minutes after removing the mud surrounding the army. Excavations in Pit K9901 have uncovered in 1999 a series of associated terracotta sculptures that have been dubbed " The Acrobats ", which have been remarked to display an advanced understanding of human anatomy. The original function of these statues remains unclear, but they have been described as either potentially acrobat or dancer figures. The number of these figures uncovered thus far are relatively few compared to

3330-551: The figures outside of China was held at the National Gallery of Victoria (NGV) in Melbourne , Australia in 1982. A collection of 120 objects from the mausoleum and 12 terracotta warriors were displayed at the British Museum in London as its special exhibition "The First Emperor: China's Terracotta Army" from 13 September 2007 to April 2008. This exhibition made 2008 the British Museum's most successful year and made

3404-612: The first emperor's death, recorded in Shui Jing Zhu that Mount Li was a favoured location due to its auspicious geology: "famed for its jade mines, its northern side was rich in gold, and its southern side rich in beautiful jade; the first emperor, covetous of its fine reputation, therefore chose to be buried there". Sima Qian wrote that the first emperor was buried with palaces, towers, officials, valuable artifacts and wondrous objects. According to this famous account, 100 flowing rivers were simulated using mercury, and above them

3478-532: The future, in order to know what posterity thinks about him and his work. The British Museum and the Reading Room serve as the settings for An Encounter at the Museum , an anthology of romance novellas by Claudia Dain and Deb Marlowe , among others. Virginia Woolf made reference to the British Museum Reading Room in a passage from her 1929 essay, A Room of One's Own . She wrote, "The swing doors swung open, and there one stood under

3552-478: The generals. The figures include warriors, chariots and horses. Estimates from 2007 were that the three pits containing the Terracotta Army hold more than 8,000 soldiers, 130 chariots with 520 horses, and 150 cavalry horses, the majority of which remain in situ in the pits near Qin Shi Huang's mausoleum . Other, non-military terracotta figures have since been found in other pits, including those of officials, acrobats, strongmen, and musicians. The construction of

3626-547: The last 2200 years. However, research in 2019 indicated that the chromium was merely contamination from nearby lacquer, not a means of protecting the weapons. The slightly alkaline pH and small particle size of the burial soil most likely preserved the weapons. The swords contain an alloy of copper, tin, and other elements including nickel, magnesium, and cobalt. Some carry inscriptions that date their manufacture to between 245 and 228 BCE, indicating that they were used before burial. Only very few figurines are known from before

3700-427: The mausoleum complex and tomb itself had been looted by Xiang Yu , a contender for the throne after the death of the first emperor. However, there are indications that the tomb itself may not have been plundered. The Terracotta Army was discovered on 29 March 1974 by a group of farmers— Yang Zhifa , his five brothers, and neighbour Wang Puzhi—who were digging a well approximately 1.5 km (0.93 mi) east of

3774-626: The mausoleum, was hosted by the Montreal Museum of Fine Arts from 11 February 2011 to 26 June 2011. In Italy, from July 2008 to 16 November 2008, five of the warriors of the terracotta army were displayed in Turin at the Museum of Antiquities, and from 16 April 2010 to 5 September 2010 nine statues including officials, lancers and an archer were displayed at the Royal Palace in Milan at

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3848-417: The missing weapons, have been taken as evidence of the reported looting by Xiang Yu and the subsequent burning of the site, which is thought to have caused the roof to collapse and crush the army figures below. The terracotta figures currently on display have been restored from the fragments. Other pits that formed the necropolis have also been excavated. These pits lie within and outside the walls surrounding

3922-495: The more noted warrior figures, with the total discovered probably numbering a dozen. The figures are bare with the exception of a loincloth as dress. These figures are very vivid and less stereotypical than the soldiers, especially through the dynamic treatment of the musculature and bone joints. Some of the men are very lean, while others have massive bodies. Several of them are shown in the process of moving or making gestures. These terracotta statues demonstrate an advanced mastery of

3996-460: The original circular British Museum Reading Room in the centre, now a museum. It is the largest covered square in Europe . The glass and steel roof is made up of 4,878 unique steel members connected at 1,566 unique nodes and 1,656 pairs of glass windowpanes making up 6,100 m of glazing; each of a unique shape because of the undulating nature of the roof. Controversially, some of the stone in

4070-523: The pieces together. When completed, the terracotta figures were placed in the pits in precise military formation according to rank and duty. In 2021, morphological studies have shown that there is a strong resemblance between the statues and that of the local region's modern inhabitants, which has led some scholars to theorize that the high level of stylistic realism stems from the figures being modelled on actual soldiers. The faces were created using molds , and at least ten face molds may have been used. Clay

4144-450: The presence or absence of metallic impurities was consistent within bundles. Based on the arrows' chemical compositions, the researchers concluded that a cellular manufacturing system similar to the one used in a modern Toyota factory, as opposed to a continuous assembly line in the early days of the automobile industry, was employed. Grinding and polishing marks visible under a scanning electron microscope have provided evidence for

4218-418: The recovered items are arrowheads, which are usually found in bundles of 100 units. Studies of these arrowheads suggest that they were produced by self-sufficient, autonomous workshops using a process referred to as cellular production or Toyotism . Some weapons were coated with a 10–15 micrometer layer of chromium dioxide before burial that was believed to have protected them from any form of decay for

4292-420: The site excavations. These are located approximately 1.5 km (0.93 mi) east of the burial mound. The soldiers within were laid out as if to protect the tomb from the east, where the Qin Emperor's conquered states lay, and were discovered 7 m below the excavation level. Pit 1, which is 230 m (750 ft) long and 62 m (203 ft) wide, contains the main army of more than 3,000 figures. It

4366-490: The site in the two millennia following its construction, but archaeologists found evidence of earlier disturbances at the site. During the excavations near the Mount Li burial mound, archaeologists found several graves dating from the 18th and 19th centuries, where diggers had apparently struck terracotta fragments. These were discarded as worthless and used along with soil to backfill the excavations. The tomb appears to be

4440-467: The spaces below. North of the Reading Room there is a block with a museum shop at ground level, a gallery for temporary exhibitions above and a restaurant above that, just below the glass roof. The Clore Education Centre is housed in the lower level of the Great Court. It comprises the: Nelson Mandela spoke at the inauguration of the BP Lecture Theatre on 16 November 2000. He supported

4514-476: The surrounding ground level when completed. Pit 2 has cavalry and infantry units as well as war chariots and is thought to represent a military guard. Pit 3 is the command post, with high-ranking officers and a war chariot. Pit 4 is empty, perhaps left unfinished by its builders. Some of the figures in Pits 1 and 2 show fire damage, while remains of burnt ceiling rafters have also been found. These, together with

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4588-494: The textbooks, cyclopedias, catalogs &c., & from wh. they send orders for books to the Library – the Library not being visited, at all, for study. There is no such room as this in Europe. It is a circle, with a dome, lighted from above, & its diameter is 4 feet greater than that of the dome of St. Paul's. The autographs are now open to the view of all, spread out in glass cases, – as well as much other lit. curiosities. This

4662-510: The thought of a round room in the central courtyard. The building was designed by Sydney Smirke and was constructed between 1854 and 1857. The building used cast iron, concrete, glass and the latest technology in ventilation and heating. The dome, inspired by the Pantheon in Rome , has a diameter of 42.6 metres but is not technically free standing: constructed in segments on cast iron, the ceiling

4736-501: The time of the terracotta army, so that the humanistic and animalistic style may have appeared dramatically new to their contemporaries. In extant archaeology, only rare and very small terracotta warrior figurines are known from the end of the Zhou dynasty in 4th-3rd century BCE, such as the Taerpo horserider , the first known representation of a cavalryman in China, from a military tomb in

4810-829: The tomb mound. They variously contain bronze carriages, terracotta figures of entertainers such as acrobats and strongmen, officials, stone armour suits, burial sites of horses, rare animals and labourers, as well as bronze cranes and ducks set in an underground park. The terracotta figures are life-sized, typically ranging from 175 cm (5.74 ft) to about 200 cm (6.6 ft) (the officers are typically taller). They vary in height, uniform, and hairstyle in accordance with their portrayed rank. Their faces appear to be different for each individual figure, scholars have identified 10 base facial forms which were then further developed to give each figure individuality in terms of facial morphology. The figures are of these general types: armored infantry ; unarmored infantry; cavalrymen who wear

4884-568: The tomb was described by the historian Sima Qian (145–90 BCE) in the Records of the Grand Historian , the first of China's 24 dynastic histories, which was written a century after the mausoleum's completion. Work on the mausoleum began in 246 BCE, soon after Emperor Qin (then aged 13) succeeded his father as King of Qin , and the project eventually involved 700,000 conscripted workers. Geographer Li Daoyuan , writing six centuries after

4958-462: The vast dome as if one were a thought in the huge bald forehead which is so splendidly encircled by a band of famous names." Richard Henry Dana Jr. visited the Reading Room on 10 September 1860 with his London friend Henry T. Parker, and reported that Parker calls & takes me to the British Museum, to see the Reading Room, wh. has been built since 1856 [Dana's prior visit]. It is the room where students & readers have their desks, & consult

5032-605: The warrior figures. Originally, the figures were painted with ground precious stones, intensely fired bones (white), pigments of iron oxide (dark red), cinnabar (red), malachite (green), azurite (blue), charcoal (black), cinnabar barium copper silicate mix (Chinese purple or Han purple), tree sap from a nearby source (more than likely from the Chinese lacquer tree ) (brown), and other colors including pink, lilac, red, white, and one unidentified color. The colored lacquer finish and individual facial features would have given

5106-586: The workers and laborers analyzed exhibited a diverse range of ethnicities, traceable to that of both Han and minority ethnicities, with a particular concentration of individuals from southern China. Most of the figures originally held real weapons, which would have increased their realism. The majority of these weapons were looted shortly after the creation of the army or have rotted away. Despite this, over 40,000 bronze items of weaponry have been recovered, including swords, daggers, spears, lances, battle-axes, scimitars, shields, crossbows, and crossbow triggers. Most of

5180-473: Was held between 8 and 16 May, attracting over 62,000 visitors. Tickets to it included a plan of the library. Regular users had to apply in writing and be issued a reader's ticket by the Principal Librarian. During the period of the British Library , access was restricted to registered researchers only; however, reader's credentials were generally available to anyone who could show that they were

5254-540: Was reopened in 2000, and from 2007 to 2017 it was used to stage temporary exhibitions. The reading room was closed to the public again in 2013 and converted for use as the museum's archive . It was reopened for guided tours in 2023, and reopened for general visitors in July 2024. In the early 1850s the museum library was in need of a larger reading room and the then-Keeper of Printed Books, Antonio Panizzi , following an earlier competition idea by William Hosking , came up with

5328-439: Was required to inscribe its name on items produced to ensure quality control. This has aided modern historians in verifying which workshops were commandeered to make tiles and other mundane items for the terracotta army. A grave pit was discovered and excavated in 2003 with 121 skeletons retrieved which has been identified by scholars to be attributable to the site workers. The individuals have been assessed to be predominantly from

5402-1084: Was their most successful exhibition ever. The same exhibition was presented at the Fundación Canal de Isabel II in Madrid between October 2004 and January 2005, their most successful ever. From December 2009 to May 2010, the exhibition was shown in the Centro Cultural La Moneda in Santiago de Chile . The exhibition traveled to North America and visited museums such as the Asian Art Museum of San Francisco , Bowers Museum in Santa Ana, California, Houston Museum of Natural Science , High Museum of Art in Atlanta, National Geographic Society Museum in Washington, D.C., and

5476-502: Was then added after assembly to provide individual facial features to make each figure appear different. It is believed that the warriors' legs were made in much the same way that terracotta drainage pipes were manufactured at the time. This would classify the process as assembly line production, with specific parts manufactured and assembled after being fired, as opposed to crafting a figure as one solid piece and subsequently firing it. In those times of tight imperial control, each workshop

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