Szilágyi András (szerk.): Ars Decorativa 19. (Budapest, 2000)
Ildikó NAGY: Copies of Murals from Anak Tomb No. 3 in the Korean Collection of the Ferenc Hopp Museum of Eastern Asiatic Arts
ILDIKÓ NAGY COPIES OF MURALS FROM ANAK TOMB NO. 3 IN THE KOREAN COLLECTION OF THE FERENC HOPP MUSEUM OF EASTERN ASIATIC ARTS The murals in the Anak Tomb No. 3 have a decisive importance in the history of Korean culture and especially in the history of Korean painting and tomb architecture. They not only inform us about the burial customs of the time, but present a very wide range of scenes of everyday activities, thus revealing social customs, clothing customs and utility objects used in the Northern territory of Korean peninsula in the middle of the 4 th century A.D. The Anak Tomb No. 3 was discovered in 1949 by Korean specialists and it evoked great international interest on account of the following: 1/ by the inscription found on the left wall of the entrance to the West Wing Chamber could be exactly dated and even the name and rank of the deceased could be precisely identified; 21 though according to its architecture and decoration it is an old Chinese-type tomb it served as a forerunner to, and a model for, the later development of Koguryo burial architecture and decoration, thus enriching Korean culture;and 3/ according to deeper studies on the utility objects and other elements depicted on the murals under discussion they already show traces of Korean influence in the clothing customs and everyday activities of the inhabitants of the Chinese colony Lolang on the territory of Korea. This very tomb proved to be the largest one according to its area and the most complicated one according to its groundplan among the Korean tombs with murals. It is oriented to the south and has the following dimensions: length (south to north): 10 m; width (east to west): 8 m; inner height: 3,5 m. At the request of the Hungarian Embassy in P'yongyang, a talented Korean painter made coloured copies of the murals in their original size and a sculptor made a two-part model of the tomb in 1954 1 (Ills. 1-3). The series, consisting of nine paintings and the model, entered the Korean Collection of the Ferenc Hopp Museum in December 1955, as a gift from the Hungarian Institute of Cultural Relations. They were exhibited in the Museum in 1956 as their first show in Europe 2 . The murals themselves could otherwise only have been seen on the original site, i.e. in the old tomb from the 4 th century A.D. on the territory of the North Korea, but the geographical distance involved and the fact that the site could not be easily visited for fear of further decay, left only a faint chance for studying them on the spot. As the Anak Tomb No. 3 is an important relic from the point of view of burial architecture, the history of painting and the history of culture, this very tomb and the Koguryo tombs with murals will be added by UNESCO to the Register of World Heritage in the near future 3 .
