EASTERN HAN DYNASTY (AD 25-220)

This very rare carving is known as a sinan pei, or ‘compass pendant’, shaped after an ancient Chinese compass with a metal spoon on a plate known as sinan. A very similarly shaped white jade pendant was unearthed from an Eastern Han tomb in Hanjiang Ganquan in Yangzhou city, illustrated in The Complete Collection of Jades Unearthed in China- 7 – Jiangsu, Shanghai, Beijing, 2005, p. 153 (fig. 1).