ENG-1955 — Page 235

184

HONG KONG ANNUAL REPORT

"The tomb consists of three chambers, varying in length between 12 and 13 ft., 5 ft. wide, and roofed with a barrel vault 5 ft. high. The three chambers are set in the form of the letter T, the two arms and the body of which meet on the three sides of a square chamber 7 ft. wide, covered by a domed vault, like a beehive, 9 ft. high. On the fourth side of the square chamber is an entrance, also roofed with a barrel vault, and facing a little to the east of due south.

"The interior of the tomb is lined with bricks, laid without mortar, and measuring about 16′′ by 18′′ by 2′′. The exposed edges of a large proportion of the bricks show moulded designs, sometimes including short inscriptions. In some places, however, the decoration is very faint. It has partly been destroyed by time, and in places may have been absent altogether due to carelessness in the making.

"At the time of discovery the floor of the central chamber was piled with loose earth to a depth of two or three feet, upon which pottery vessels were lying in some disorder. The top of the domed vault had been damaged. Due to the hill having been partially levelled for squatter cultivation, and having later been built on by squatters, the top of the tomb was, in fact, only a foot or so under the soil, and at one place bricks were actually visible. The top of the dome had been repaired at some time with broken brick and a block of granite, but the aperture thus repaired seems too small to have admitted a person.

"The earth within the tomb was of very fine texture, unlike the gritty soil outside, and one of the unsolved problems is to explain how it accumulated within a closed tomb. It has been suggested that it may have been carried by water percolating between the bricks of the walls closing the ends of the chambers, where the bricks, not being under pressure, appear to be more loosely set.

"A total of sixty-one pieces of pottery was found, including four models of houses, twenty-one jars, two bowls, three stem-cups, a toilet jar (lien), a tripod with cover, and eight pieces of bronze in a very fragile condition. Some of the scattered pieces bear the marks of ancient fractures, sug-. gesting that the tomb may have been entered at some time in the past. Lower down in the earth deposit, however, were found a number of important pieces obviously in their original position.