In the ancient world, the kingdom of Silla (57 BC–AD 935) on the Korean peninsula was renowned as a country of gold. Silla was one of three kingdoms on the Korean peninsula that rose to prominence in the late 4th and early 5th centuries under the rule of a hereditary monarchy. Silla gradually expanded its power and territory by defeating neighbouring states and eventually conquered and unified most of the Korean peninsula by the second half of the 7th century. Unification was formed when the Silla kingdom, allied with Tang China, defeated the rival kingdoms of Baekje (in 660) and Goguryeo (in 668).
Silla’s history and culture are largely known today through material unearthed from elaborate burial sites. Located in modern-day Gyeongju (the old Silla capital Geumseong), the tombs of kings, queens, princes, royal relatives, and other elites are the dominant sight in the city. From the time of their construction, as symbols of political authority and cultural grandeur, they have dominated the landscape. Some of the most famous archaeological finds from this period are the gold tomb objects that were mainly excavated in the 20th century. The earliest gold objects from Silla date to the last quarter of the 4th century, with the most spectacular and best-known objects being the gold crowns dating to the 5th to 6th centuries.
Gold has long been regarded in Korea, as in many other cultures, as a symbol of eternity and nobility due to its property of retaining its brilliance for long periods of time. Gold also represented the political and cultural growth of the kingdom, which as the Unified Silla, ruled for about 150 years, from the early 5th to mid-6th century. In the kingdom’s early period, the ruler adopted the local title of maripgan.
During this period, gold was used to produce a wide range of ornamental and practical objects including, in addition to the crown, belts, earrings, bracelets, finger rings, and weapons, including swords, horse trappings, and bowls. The people of Silla in this period also held the tradition of burying precious gold objects with the deceased in the belief that the act would help the dead in the afterlife, whilst increasing the authority and power of the living offering these objects to the dead.
The prolific use of gold began in the Silla kingdom in the 4th century, as documented in the 3rd-century Chinese accounts of the Samhan (three Han) confederacies in the Sanguozhi (Record of the Three Kingdoms) that stated ‘The people of Samhan greatly value beads so they sew them onto their clothes as ornaments or wear them on the neck and ear. Nevertheless, they do not highly regard, gold, silver and silk’. The record correlates with archaeological evidence – numerous beads made of glass and semi-precious stones have been excavated from these tombs; however, no gold ornaments have been found. The Samhan confederacies eventually became the kingdoms of Baekje, Silla, and Gaya.
According to the same source, the Goguryeo kingdom (37 BC to AD 668) was known to have produced and used gold ornaments from around the 1st century, and the dynasties in central China and their frontier prefectures also used gold and silver objects during this period. Whatever the reason for the Samhan not valuing gold, the outset of ancient gold culture in the South-Central region of the Korean peninsula seems to coincide with the establishment of the Silla kingdom, particularly in the Maripgan period (356-514). The Maripgan period lasted around 150 years, after Silla had solidified its position around the 5th century. In 503, under King Jijeung, Silla became the kingdom’s official name along with the adoption of the Chinese-style title for the ruler – wang. A little later, in 527, Silla also adopted Buddhism as the state religion.
In the modern Gyeongju downtown area, there are more than 1,800 large and small Silla tombs that include around 150 tombs of relatively large size, hinting that they were the burial sites of kings and prominent members of the royal family. The main area, the Daereungwon Ancient Tomb complex has been divided into five neighbourhoods: Noseo-dong, Nodong-dong, Hwangnam-dong, Hwango-dong, and Inwang-dong, spanning over 602,000 square metres.
During the Japanese colonial period (1910-45), these mysterious mounds in Gyeongju were excavated as part of an expansion and infrastructure programme on the peninsula with very little of the finds from this era being accurately recorded. Archaeological research in the 20th century was first initiated by the government in the 1970s.
Archaeological discoveries show that the ruling class of Silla wore a variety of ornamental head coverings, circular bands (daegwan), conical caps (mogwan), and winged ornaments made of gold, silver, and gilt-bronze, symbolising the wearer’s position in society. Crowns made of pure gold have been discovered at the sites in Gyeongju, while the gilt-bronze crowns were found not only in Gyeongju but also in the surrounding areas. The pure gold crowns were only found at the stone-mound and wooden-cist tombs located at the current archaeological site, suggesting that they were worn only by those who had supreme religious and political authority.
The first gold crown (daegwan) was discovered in 1921, when a house was being built. The owner had levelled the ground using soil from a nearby mound – and in that soil, children were found playing with beads by a Japanese policeman. Sensing that the items were precious, he was led to the hill where he discovered more Silla-period objects. The Geumwanchong (Tomb of the Gold Crown) dates to around 475-500 and is an example of the early wooden-chamber type tomb placed within a protective stone mound. The body of the deceased was laid to rest alongside numerous grave goods for the afterlife.
The earliest gold crown was discovered here, consisting of a circular headband of thin gold plate with three upright ornaments in the shape of a tree with a pair of branches. Other objects recovered include ornaments, earrings, necklaces, and other jewellery. Traded and foreign luxury goods such as bowls and glass vessels were also found alongside one of the most important finds – a sword pommel that bears the inscription ‘King Isaji’, considered the earliest of the extant burial goods from the Silla period.
A total of six gold daegwan have been discovered so far in – and these crowns have become the iconic symbols of the Maripgan rulers, characterised by their unique design that features five upright ornaments, three in the shape of a tree and two in the shape of an antler. These tree and antler motifs symbolise the wearer as a spiritual messenger linking this world with the celestial world.
The more intricately wrought crowns of the 5th century, excavated at the northern tombs of Hwangnamdaechang and Seobongchong, feature three pairs of upright branches. The crown from the later tomb of Cheonmachong, built in the 6th century, exhibits an even more elaborate form where the upright tree-shaped ornaments transform into four pairs of branches.
Ham Soon-Seop, in her essay for Silla Korea’s Golden Kingdom catalogue (an exhibition at The Metropolitan Museum of Art in 2014), wrote, ‘Silla crowns are classified into two types: mogwan (conical cap), a small hat worn over a topknot and daegwan (headband crown), worn around the forehead. For a long time, only the daegwan was regarded as a crown, and the mogwan merely as part of the daegwan. However, Silla headdresses portrayed in both visual (tomb paintings and burial figurines) and textual sources take the form of mogwan; there is no reference to the daegwan type. While the former was widely used throughout the Korean peninsula and the Japanese archipelago, the latter is found only in the southern part of Korea and in Japan.
Recent studies have revealed that these two are in fact distinct’. So far, based on archaeological evidence that royalty was buried wearing the daegwan, there were strict rules applied to the type of metal used (bronze, silver, or gold) relating to the deceased’s social status; however, this seems to have applied only to social status and not gender. It is also debated that the daegwan may have also been used for ceremonial or ritual purposes.
Richard D McBride, in his book The Three Kingdoms of Korea, notes, ‘After the adoption of Buddhism in the 6th century, the relevance of headband crowns waned, and, by the first half of the 7th century, Silla crowns were made more economically with copper sheets’. There is much scholarly debate on the significance of the change: does it manifest the deterioration of the ruler’s theocratic importance, the replacement of indigenous religious customs with more Buddhist piety and patronage, or the growing relevance of Confucian-orientated frugality?
The largest of the Silla tombs in Gyeongju is Hwangnam Daechong (the Great Tomb of Hwangnam), which consists of two mounds joined together that measure 120 metres in length by 80 metres in diameter and roughly 23 metres in height. This 5th-century twin-tomb complex in the south of the park was excavated between 1973-1975. Archaeological evidence shows that the southern tomb was built for a man and is earlier in date than the northern tomb, which was found to contain a female.
The twin tombs are significantly larger than the others in the area, and the excavated grave goods comprise elaborately decorated gold ornaments most probably made for a maripgan and his queen consort. Archaeologists discovered that the southern tomb (occupied by the maripgan), contained a gilt-bronze crown, whilst the female in the northern tomb was buried with a pure-gold crown. Around 45 large earthenware jars, along with iron weapons, including swords and arrowheads, equestrian accessories, as well as farming tools were also found.
In the 1970s, the Korean government decided to excavate the ancient Silla tombs in Gyeongju as part of the effort to develop tourist attractions in the area. This initiative designated the area as a large public park, now called Daereungwon, or Grand Tomb Park, and brought its management under one agency.
The first tomb excavation under this initiative was in 1973, when Hwangnam-dong Tomb No 155, dating to late 5th/early 6th century, was studied. The huge tomb, 13 metres high with a diameter of 47 metres, was found to contain a stone mound, seven metres under the surface (six metres high with a diameter of 23 metres) that contained a wooden chamber surrounding a wooden coffin, and grave goods. The human remains had been adorned with a gold crown, gold earrings, jade chest ornaments, a gold belt, and a sword. One of the most well-known images from this find is the pair of mud guards made from birch bark that are painted with a white flying horse that had survived for over 1,500 years. They also gave the tomb its current name, Cheonmachong (Tomb of the Heavenly Horse).
Following Silla’s unification of the peninsula in 668, economic and cultural exchanges with Eurasia expanded. Political ties and trade with Tang-dynasty (618–907) China placed Silla firmly within the vast network of connections between East and West that characterised the famed Silk Road. While the kingdom was located at the southeastern end of the Korean Peninsula, Silla had remained in active cultural exchanges with the outside world. Archaeological discoveries from Silla sites include exotic items that the kingdom imported, as well as objects made by Silla craftsmen with foreign influences. Glass vessels are a classic Silk-Road traded item and were imported by Silla with approximately 25 vessels, dating to the 4th to 5th century, found in the Daereungwon archaeological park.
A celebrated find related to the Silk Road and proof of Silla’s international outlook is the golden dagger found in the Gyerim-ro Tomb, No 14 in 1973 – a stone mound tomb with a wooden cist that was occupied by two men and built in the early 6th century. The dagger proves foreign trading activities, the reach of the kingdom, and its involvement in the Silk Road trade. Archaeologists originally believed that the owner of the dagger was a man who had originated in Western or Central Asia, but this idea has now been cast aside as there were no other foreign goods from Central Asia discovered in the tomb. The general agreement now is that the golden dagger was owned by a wealthy noble from the Silla kingdom.
Silla emerged from a small inland single state to become a powerful force on the Korean Peninsula, becoming the ultimate power among the warring kingdoms to become The Three Kingdoms (1st-7th century) and eventually the Unified Silla (668-935). At its height, Unified Silla was prosperous, vibrant, and outward- looking. Its capital in present-day Gyeongju became one of the largest cities of its time and a centre for Buddhist art and architecture whilst maintaining its strong ties with Tang China and incorporating Confucian with Buddhist ideologies.
At its height, Silla was a highly centralised and sophisticated state, an important political and religious centre that was known for its culture. The preservation of this culture in Gwangju continues to bring this flouring culture to life.
An exhibition at the Gyeongju National Museum, Silla Gold Crowns, Power and Prestige, runs from 28 October to 14 December 2025
