Myth of the Golden Dragon

Features September/October 2025

Eclectic artifacts from tombs in northeastern China tell the story of a little-known dynasty
Photograph courtesy Liaoning Provincial Museum, Liaoning Provincial Institute of Cultural Relics and Archaeology, and Chaoyang County Museum
SHARE:

In Chinese dynastic histories, tales are told of a general named Feng Sufu who lived some 1,600 years ago. Brother to the future emperor Feng Ba, Feng Sufu served one of a series of states known as the Three Yan. The Three Yan emperors ruled parts of northeastern China, mostly from their capital of Longcheng, or “Dragon City,” in what is now Liaoning Province, from a.d. 337 to 436, a brief and tumultuous period in China’s long history.

Become a Digital Subscriber Today

Get full access to all content on the ARCHAEOLOGY website and our PDF archive going back to the first publication in March 1948.

Already a Subscriber? Sign In

  • Features September/October 2025

    Spirit Cave Connection

    The world’s oldest mummified person is the ancestor of Nevada’s Northern Paiute people

    Read Article
    Howard Goldbaum/allaroundnevada.com
  • Features September/October 2025

    Here Comes the Sun

    On a small Danish island 5,000 years ago, farmers crafted tokens to bring the sun out of the shadows

    Read Article
    Courtesy the National Museum of Denmark
  • Features September/October 2025

    Remote Sanctuary at the Crossroads of Empire

    Ancient Bactrians invented distinct ways to worship their gods 2,300 years ago in Tajikistan

    Read Article
    Excavations of the sanctuary in the village of Torbulok in southern
    Gunvor Lindström/Excavations supported by the German Research Foundation
  • Letter from Greece September/October 2025

    Searching for Washingtonia

    How archaeologists located a forgotten nineteenth-century utopian community

    Read Article
    Albert Sarvis