Pottery model of a wellhead

A grey pottery model of a wellhead of rectangular shape, the top formed by a construction of four interlinking ‘beams’, supported by fluted vertical columns.  The four sides are decorated in moulded technique with animals and figures in low relief.  One of the long sides features a dragon and a tiger, representing the Eastern and Western ‘Animals of the Four Directions’.  On the opposite side a human figure carrying a stick and a jar runs towards a mythical devil-like creature holding a spear and a jar.  The two short sides are impressed with a goat and an ox, the latter lowering its head to drink from a bucket.

•  The two small slots on the top edge of this wellhead originally held wooden posts, forming a frame from which a miniature bucket was suspended from a winch. An example of such an intact well is preserved in the Henan Provincial Museum in Zhengzhou.1 A virtually identical model of a wellhead from the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York was exhibited at the Princeton University Art Museum in 2005.2   In the accompanying essay, Lydia Thompson identifies the devil-like creature as Chi You, the God of War and inventor of weapons, portrayed in his role as a Rain God. Thompson relates how Chi You eventually came to be invoked as a rainmaker - and by extension a god of agricultural and human fertility - which would explain his presence on the side of this wellhead.2  

1. Rawson, J. (ed.) Mysteries of Ancient China, New Discoveries from the Early Dynasties, British Museum Press, 1996, no. 99, pp. 193-4
2. Liu, C.Y, Nylan, M and Barbieri-Low Recarving China’s Past, Art, Archaeology and Architecture of the “Wu Family Shrines” Princeton University Art Museum, 2005, no. 18, pp. 299