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Tang Dynasty agate cup evidence of cultural exchanges 1,000 years ago
Updated: May 6, 2022
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What did aristocrats in the Tang Dynasty (618-907) use for drinking? The Shaanxi History Museum has in its collection an animal-head-shaped agate cup with a gold mouth. It was excavated from a Hejia village site in Xi’an in 1970.
The cup is a rare stone carving with a design that looks like a horn.
Cups in such shape were popular in Central and West Asia, which were also the major mining sites for sardonyx stones. The little cup is believed to be evidence of cultural exchanges between China and foreign countries more than 1,000 years ago.
