The Việt Khê boat-shaped coffin (LSb.38456)
Wood
Length: 476cm
Width: 77cm
Depth: 39cm
Đông Sơn culture. Circa 2500 to 2000 BCE.
Recognizing Decision No.2599/QĐ-TTg on the 30th December 2013 by the Prime Minister of Vietnam.
Discovered in Ngọc Khê village, Phù Ninh commune, Thủy Nguyên district, Hải Phòng city in 1961.
The Việt Khê boat-shaped coffin and its funeral belongings
The boat-shaped coffin is evidence of the burial traditions of the Đông Sơn people who lived in the Northern Delta and Coastal Areas.
The Việt Khê boat-shaped coffin was made from an ironwood tree trunk. In addition to some decayed funeral belongings of weaved and knitted items, the coffin also contains over 100 objects, most of which are made of bronze, including household utensils, tools, weapons and musical instruments. In particular, there are some unique objects such as a bronze ladle with a handle decoration of a man figurine playing a panpile; a piece of leather with traces of paint (possibly a leather breastplate with decorative paint); wooden items... These artifacts have provided us with a better understanding of the socio economic life of the Đông Sơn people, especially some traditional handicrafts such as bronze casting, leather tanning, painting, and carpentry. Besides, there are some bronze lances and spears being bent or cut off heads, showing the belief of “offerings to the deceased”, that the living purposed to “damage” those possessions to cut them off from the living world, just like the custom of breaking belongings for the dead in the re-burial rites of some ethnic groups in the Central Highlands of Vietnam today.
The large-size coffin with a rich number of valuable funeral objects shows the wealth of the Việt Khê coffin’s owner, and reflects the burial customs as well as the conceptions of the living world and dead world in the spiritual beliefs of the ancient Vietnamese people.