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Shi Huang

“We will not leave the desert till we beat the foe, although in war our golden armour be outworn 100 times.”
In this celebrated poem from China’s Tang dynasty, Wang Changling captured the unyielding spirit of soldiers in golden armour battling on the desert frontiers.
But for centuries, the splendour of the Tang gold-plated armour lived only in poetry and imagination, as none had ever been unearthed.
But that changed last week, when the Key Laboratory of Archaeological Sciences and Cultural Heritage at the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences (CASS) unveiled the only known physical example of the Tang dynasty “golden” armour – a meticulously restored suit of gilded bronze armour found in a royal tomb on the Tibetan plateau.

The restoration team behind the project not only reassembled the armour piece by piece but also produced a video reconstruction depicting its likely original appearance.
The artefacts, including armour, lacquerware and metal objects, were salvaged and restored from the Tuyuhun royal tombs between 2022 and 2025.
“We adopted a strategy of ‘disassembling the whole into parts and reassembling the parts into a whole’, conducting layered cleaning, extraction and protection while meticulously cataloguing each armour plate,” cultural heritage conservation expert Guo Zhengchen said at a press conference during the armour’s unveiling on January 14.
The royal tomb had previously suffered looting and salvage excavations, which left the armour plates badly fragmented and degraded.
A 2024 excavation report in the journal Archaeology described the find thus: “Several bronze armour plates were discovered … The plates are nearly rectangular with a semicircular lower edge … A large number of lacquered armour pieces were also found.”
The copper and lacquered armour fragments were found intermingled and heaped together, with no clear structural relationship. They were in a fragile state, at risk of shattering at the slightest touch.
“We recorded the original spatial information of each plate via 3D scanning and analysed their manufacturing techniques and composition using scanning electron microscopy and ultra-depth microscopy,” the conservators said.
Their analysis revealed that this was not merely bronze armour but golden armour with additional gilding. Based on this finding, they created a detailed restoration video.
The reconstructed armour in the video brings to life another Tang poem: “Like golden scale on water, sunrays strike our coats of mail.”
Based on gold artefacts and silk textiles in the tomb and tree-ring dating of its wooden structure, the burial was dated to the mid-8th century, the conservation report stated.
It said the tomb’s occupant was confirmed to be a Tuyuhun king and the gold armour displayed was likely to have been among his most prized possessions.

Once a powerful kingdom on China’s western frontier, the Tuyuhun realm was successively subdued by the Sui and later the Tang dynasties, before becoming a vassal of the Tubo empire based on the Tibetan plateau. Alongside the golden armour, the tomb also yielded an array of equestrian gear as well as iron and lacquered armour, offering a glimpse into the martial culture of the period.
The find aligned with records in the New Book of Tang, compiled by 11th century historian Ouyang Xiu, which said the Tubo possessed “excellent armour covering the entire body, with only openings for the eyes, so that strong bows and sharp blades could not inflict serious harm”.
Dulan county in northwestern Qinghai province, the site of the tomb, was an important transit point for east-west trade via the Silk Road.
The Qinghai route served as a vital artery, linking the Tubo empire and the Tang dynasty through a trade corridor that stretched eastwards to Changan (modern-day Xian) and westwards to Xinjiang, Persia (today’s Iran), and other regions across Central Asia.


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Science

Chinese team restores legendary Tang dynasty ‘golden’ armour found in Tibetan tomb

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News

China

Tomb’s occupant confirmed to be a Tuyuhun king and the golden armour is likely to have been among his prized possessions, conservators say


Tomb’s occupant confirmed to be a Tuyuhun king and the golden armour is likely to have been among his prized possessions, conservators say.


Chinese team restores legendary Tang dynasty ‘golden’ armour found in Tibetan tomb

.css-1c6uqr6{color:inherit;font-weight:inherit;font-size:inherit;font-family:inherit;line-height:inherit;overflow-wrap:break-word;}Tomb’s occupant confirmed to be a Tuyuhun king and the golden armour is likely to have been among his prized possessions, conservators say

Tomb’s occupant confirmed to be a Tuyuhun king and the golden armour is likely to have been among his prized possessions, conservators say