WASHINGTON — The world's strangest army is here.
Buried for more than 2,000 years until their accidental discovery by Chinese farmers in 1974, the world-famous terra cotta warriors — a life-size militia of about 7,000 clay figures created to protect China's first emperor in the afterlife — have arrived in Washington.
Well, they aren't all coming. Only 1,000 or so have been unearthed, and 15 of them are coming, along with more than 100 related artifacts from the grave site of Qin Shihuangdi (259-210 B.C.) in Shaanxi province.
On view through March 31 at the National Geographic Museum, the last stop on a four-city U.S. tour, “Terra Cotta Warriors: Guardians of China's First Emperor” is the first time this many of the figures have traveled to the United States.
What's more, according to museum director Susan Norton, museum visitors here will be able to get within a few feet of the warriors, far closer than even at the original archeological site, where visitors look down on the burial pits from a distance.
The proximity makes for one powerful visual punch. You can feel it the minute you step in the show's first gallery, which includes a single ghostly cavalryman and his horse. That's it. No glass display cases. No clutter.
Norton calls it the show's first “wow moment,” and it is. But it's not the last.
The show culminates in a 5,000-square-foot gallery holding eight terra cotta warriors in three groups: three officers, including one general; two archers; and two infantrymen and a chariot driver. It's the show's big payoff.
The man who commissioned the warriors, Qin Shihuangdi, was the first ruler to unite China's warring kingdoms and began construction on what would become known as the Great Wall. He also credited with standardizing China's weights, measures and currency.
It took 36 years for his workers to build — and then bury — these statues.
One enigmatic element of the exhibit is an empty suit of armor. Made of limestone tiles wired together, the suit includes a 40-pound tunic and 7-pound helmet. It's too heavy for mortal soldiers. Or even terra cotta ones.
Some of the clay soldiers are wearing battle gear. But this suit of armor was left at the ready for someone else, some spectral soldier from beyond the grave.
Some of the terra cotta figures are nonmilitary: a stable boy, a civil official, a strongman and two musicians.
Don't miss the strongman. Built with an almost sumo-wrestler paunch, but missing his head, he's the most unusual of the 15 figures, no two of whom are alike.
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