Chinese bronze mirrors lie in graves from the Altai to the Volga. A Han mirror may have been cherished for its magic power, and it was also a toilet article.[1] The mirrors came from China, and when the supply stopped they were copied beyond the frontier.[2]
Arrival of the mirrors
The earliest Chinese mirrors found outside China are two mirrors of the Huai type, one from Tomsk and one from the sixth mound at Pazyryk in the Altai.[3] Han mirrors are found from Outer Mongolia to the Ob and the lower Volga.[3] Those in the graves of the Xiongnu princes at Noin Ula, near the frontier, were probably gifts of the emperors.[3] Others came by trade, and the mirrors were bartered from tribe to tribe. Even fragments were prized.[3]
A broken Han mirror from the Minusinsk basin shows the value of a fragment. Its edges are smooth, not sharp as they would be if the mirror had been broken for the grave. This proves that the pieces passed through many hands.[3] Mirror fragments also lie in graves of the local elite. At the cemetery of Shombuuzyn Belchir in western Mongolia, which spans the time from about 50 BC to AD 210, two women were buried with fragments of Chinese mirrors.[4] At the fortified settlement of Ivolga, fragments of imported bronze mirrors suggest an occupation around 2100 years before the present.[5]
Finds beyond the Xiongnu
The mirrors reached the Altai, Tuva, the Talas valley and Fergana. In the Minusinsk area the finds include a mirror of the type with a quaint script and five mirrors of the TLV type.[6] The Talas valley and Fergana yielded mirrors of the type with the inscription chang yi zi sun.[6]
A mirror could be old when it was buried. In a mound at Naindi sume on the Tola river, about 120 kilometres south-west of Ulaanbaatar, a Han mirror lay together with a piece of Chinese silk whose Sasanian pattern dates it to the sixth or seventh century.[7] A mirror of the Han age was found together with a Turkic stirrup in a mound at Zarevshchina in the Astrakhan region. How the Turkic nomads came by it can only be guessed, and the same account notes that they were not averse to occasional grave robbing.[6] In the Altai a fragment of a Chinese bronze mirror lay in a grave of the Bulan-Koby type, which dates from the centuries before the Göktürk khaganate.[8]
Mirrors of the Six Dynasties period are absent from the steppe. The reason is the breakdown of Chinese power in the western regions, and Chinese mirrors reappeared in Central Asia only in the Tang period.[2]
Copies cast in the steppe
When the supply from the great state workshops of China dried up in the later second century, the people beyond the frontier cast their own mirrors in the shape and with the patterns of the Chinese disks.[2] Many small mirrors of the later Han and Three Kingdoms are so poorly cast and so crudely decorated that they were rarely collected. They were cheap, and the barbarians must have sought them eagerly.[2] The copies vary greatly in quality. The least changed come from the oasis cities of Xinjiang, where only the simplified decoration gives them away.[9] A mirror from the Kokel cemetery in Tuva is most probably a copy, as its odd decoration shows.[9]
Some Chinese designs entered a local form. In the second and third centuries the patterns of Chinese mirrors were transferred to the pendant mirrors of the Sarmatians, small bronze disks worn on a cord around the neck or fitted with a tang into a handle of wood, bone or horn.[9]
Open points
Few of the mirrors have been listed. The author of the main account says that only a small share has been published and that many are recorded only as ancient Chinese mirrors.[3] Where the copies were cast, and by whom, is not known. The sources do not say whether Chinese founders worked in the steppe.
References
Literature
- Otto J. Maenchen-Helfen, The World of the Huns: Studies in Their History and Culture (1973)
- Joshua Wright; William Honeychurch; Chunag Amartuvshin, The Xiongnu Settlements of Egiin Gol, Mongolia (2009)
- Juhyeon Lee et al., Genetic Population Structure of the Xiongnu Empire at Imperial and Local Scales (2023)
- Nikita Konstantinov; Vasilii Soenov; Synaru Trifanova; Svetlana Svyatko, History and culture of the early Türkic period. A review of archaeological monuments in the Russian Altai from the 4th–6th century AD (2018)
What links here1
- Places
- Gol Mod
Cite this article
Yavuz, Emre-E. “Bronze Mirrors of the Steppe.” Turkic Atlas, revised 7 November 2026. https://turkicatlas.org/institutions/bronze-mirrors-of-the-steppe/
Last revised: 7 November 2026
