Around two thousand years ago, these low-relief images—here seen in rubbings but originally carved in stone—decorated the inside of a house-shaped funerary shrine. Such shrines were used to make offerings to a family’s ancestors.

Most often, a shrine’s carvings depicted scenes from ancient history and mythology, or addressed ideas and beliefs about the afterlife. Here, we find a historical event in the center band: a failed assassination attempt on King Zheng, who would later become Qin Shi Huang, the first emperor of China. And legendary figures fill the bottom band: Fuxi (holding a set square) and Nüwa (holding a compass), creators of the human race and civilization.