3,000-year-old gold funeral mask unearthed in noble's tomb in China

A gold funeral mask, thought to be more than 3,000 years old, has been discovered in the tomb of an ancient noble in the city of Zhengzhou in central China. It's one of the oldest gold objects ever found in central China, as contemporary treasures tend to be crafted from bronze and jade, raising questions about possible links to other early Chinese states where gold was more common. The gold mask is 7.2 inches long and 5.7 inches wide - large enough to cover the entire face of an adult, Huang Fucheng, a researcher at the Zhengzhou Municipal Institute of Cultural Heritage and Archaeology, told the state-owned China News Service. The South China Morning Post reported that the institute's director, Gu Wanfa, said the gold mask may have symbolized that the deceased had an "Imperishable gold body" and was likely intended to keep the spirit of the dead person whole. The newly discovered funeral mask, from the tomb at Zhengzhou in Henan province, is older than the gold funeral mask found last year in the Sanxingdui Ruins, an archaeological site in China's southwestern Sichuan province attributed to the Shu kingdom. The discovery of the new gold mask is "Exciting," said archaeologist and metallurgist Ruiliang Liu, a curator of the Early China Collection at the British Museum in London who wasn't involved in the Zhengzhou finds. "Where does the raw gold come from? [and] why did the tomb occupant choose to be buried with gold, while other top elites chose only bronzes and jades?".