Which dynasty does the pottery figurine holding a compass belong to?
The pottery figurines holding compasses are from the Southern Song Dynasty.
The pottery figurine holding a compass was unearthed in 1985 from the Jinan Tomb in Linchuan, Jiangxi Province at the end of the Southern Song Dynasty. It is 22.5 cm high. In the Northern Song Dynasty, people found that the compass did not have an azimuth disk, which was very inconvenient to use, so they integrated the compass and the azimuth disk into a more practical compass needle.
The compass-holding figurines of the Song Dynasty are physical materials for studying the shape and function of compasses. This figurine was unearthed in 1985 from Zhu Jinan's tomb in Linchuan County, Jiangxi Province. The pottery figurine is holding a compass. Judging from the three characters "Zhang Xianren" on the bottom of the figurine base, it should be an ancient Feng Shui master.
In the past, some people believed that the compass invented in China was introduced to Europe and improved into a dry compass, which was transferred back to China via Japan in the middle of the Ming Dynasty. The compass held by the pottery figurine holding the compass has a supporting magnetic needle in the center and graduated lines around it, which is exactly a dry compass. It proves that the dry compass was first manufactured in China during the Southern Song Dynasty.
The most distinctive features of this pottery figurine are:
The pottery figurine embraces a large compass with a pointer. The needle is rhombus-shaped in the middle, with a small hole in the middle, and long strips on both sides of the needle. shape, pointing left and right, the needle end of the right pointer is spearhead-shaped, the entire pointer position is in the center of the compass, the needle end is connected to the compass, the compass is a wide flat ring, and the plate has obvious stripes indicating the scale.
Excluding the engravings on the dial covered by the pointer tips and the figurine hands, there are 15 scales, two of which are very close and connected at one end, and the distance between the other scales is roughly the same.
This is a compass (also called a compass sutra) mounted on a dial that can be rotated to indicate direction. However, this Southern Song Dynasty painted standing compass pottery figurine appears to be relatively rough and primitive. It is the earliest known compass-shaped object in the world.