The Chinese histories mention gold in three connections with the Xiongnu. It is buried with the dead, it is sent by the Han emperor as a gift, and it is given with the insignia of a chanyu.[1] The sources name no Xiongnu gold mine and no Xiongnu goldsmith.[1]

In the grave

When a Xiongnu died, the Shiji says, he had a coffin and an outer coffin, gold and silver, clothes and furs. There was no mound, no tree and no mourning dress.[2] The Han Shu repeats the sentence in the same words.[3] Close favourites, servants and concubines followed the dead into the grave, in numbers of hundreds or thousands.[2]

One modern account relates a find to this custom. It notes pairs of a sun disc and a crescent moon, made of gold or iron, that were found in Xiongnu coffins. The pairs may connect with the offerings to Heaven and Earth and the obeisance to the sun and the moon that the chanyu made.[4]

The gift of 174 BC

In the sixth year of Emperor Wen, 174 BC, the Han court answered a letter of the chanyu.[2] The emperor sent him a list of gifts that began with robes of embroidered and brocaded silk.[2] It continued with a belt adorned with gold and a gold xupi.[2] Ten bolts of embroidery, thirty of brocade and forty each of red and green silk followed.[2] The Han Shu writes the second gold object xibi.[3]

The commentaries disagree on what the xupi was. One says that it was a belt of the Xianbei type, named after a good-omen animal, which the eastern barbarians liked to wear. A second takes it for the hook of a barbarian leather belt.[2] The Shiji gives no further description.[2] The list also names a comb or hair ornament, biyu. The text itself calls two items gold, the belt and the xupi.[2]

The gold of 51 BC

The gift list for the audience of Huhanye in 51 BC again names gold: a gold seal on a dark-green ribbon and twenty jin of gold.[3] The article on the Han bestowals on the chanyu gives the whole list. Gold is a small part of it beside the silk.[3]

Limits of the sources

The sources do not say how much gold the Xiongnu held, or where it came from.[1] The iron of the Xiongnu is told in the article on Xiongnu ironworking.

References

  1. ^ a b c Shiji, juan 110; Han Shu, juan 94
  2. ^ a b c d e f g h i Shiji, juan 110
  3. ^ a b c d Han Shu, juan 94
  4. ^ Miller 2014, p. 5

Sources

Literature

  • Bryan K. Miller, Xiongnu “Kings” and the Political Order of the Steppe Empire (2014)

Related

What links here1

Institutions and Titles
The Economy of the Steppe Empires

Cite this article

Yavuz, Emre-E. “Gold of the Xiongnu Court.” Turkic Atlas, revised 7 November 2026. https://turkicatlas.org/institutions/xiongnu-gold/

Last revised: 7 November 2026