Liao women: Forging a strong cultural identity

According to the Annuals of Liao, upon the death of Abaoji, the formidable empress, with one swift stroke of her sword, cut off one of her own arms, which she then asked to be buried with the emperor. Some scholars have suggested it was the fingers that she severed.

While the authenticity of the incident has long been contended, the aristocratic women of Liao had clearly broken what Johnson considers a steppe tradition for wives to follow their husbands in death, a fact that testifies to the growing social status and self-awareness of the Khitan women during the Liao time.

"By this time, probably under the influence of China's central dynasties, the Khitan elite had largely abandoned their earlier funerary customs of embalming and drying the body — often in the open air. Well-furnished tombs were constructed for the deceased to continue their life as it once was," says Xu, the curator.

Sharing the same stone funerary bed with her husband, the Princess of the State of Chen had a miscellany of things dangling from her waist. These included, apart from jade and amber pendants, a cylindrical gold sewing case for needles and a gold pouch with an openwork design that was possibly influenced by the Northern Song style.

There was also a pair of small gold cases with attaching chains."These could be face powder containers, allowing the princess to give her makeup a few touch-ups without having to get off the saddle," says Xu.

In her epitaph, the highborn princess, who died at 18, was said to have carried herself with a combination of dignity and humility. "She adhered reverently to feminine virtues," reads the epitaph — the words reminiscent of Confucian teachings. Yet, as a child, she was"smart and skilled in argument".

"The end comes to all, but for the princess, it has arrived a little too soon," reads the final sentence of the epitaph.