Model of a Granary

This model of a two-story Han dynasty granary (206 b.c.-a.d. 220) accurately depicts the traditional timber bracket system used to support both the roof overhang and second floor balcony. More fanciful, however, are the building's supports made in the form of seated bears. Bears were often depicted in Han dynasty art and, in the cosmology of that era, they are thought to inhabit the "spirit mountain," an intermediary realm of wilderness between heaven and earth. As an auspicious animal associated with the afterlife, bears were appropriate tomb furnishings but, they seldom appear in funerary art following the Han dynasty.