Twelve Metal Colossi

Common card · No. 434641

The Twelve Metal Colossi (Chinese: 十二金人) were twelve bronze monumental statues cast after 221 BCE in the Qin dynasty by the order of Qin Shi Huang, the first Emperor of China. After defeating the other six Warring States during Qin's wars of unification, Qin Shi Huang had their bronze weapons collected and melted them down to be recast as bells and statues. Particularly noteworthy among them were twelve human statues, each said to have weighed a thousand dan [about 30 tons]. The Emperor displayed them in the palace. Sima Qian considered the casting of these monumental statues as one of the great achievements of the Emperor, on a par with the "unification of the law, weights and measurements, standardization of the axle width of carriages, and standardization of the writing system". The last of the statues were destroyed in the 4th century CE. No illustrations have survived.

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