Chinese archaeologists have restored a 1,400-year-old royal crown, which belonged to the wife of Yang Guang, or Emperor Yang of Sui, the second and last monarch of the short-lived Sui Dynasty (581-618).
The crown was unearthed in the tomb of the queen, known as Empress Xiao, in 2012 in Yangzhou, eastern China's Jiangsu Province.
It is the oldest official crown of a queen ever found in China.
Archaeologists dug it out of a rotten wooden box near the queen's coffin and sent it to a relic restoration lab with the Cultural Relic Protection Institute in northwest China's Shaanxi Province.
Yang Junchang, a professor with Northwest Industrial University, who led the restoration project, said his team carefully cleared fragile copper wires from the crown, inch by inch, to restore 13 flower decorations.
The flowers made of gilded bronze wires are very delicate with clear shapes of stalks, petals and stamen. The decorations are gold colored, and flicker with movement.
The crown was made with a variety of materials, including bronze wire, gold, pearls, cotton and silk.
Shu Jiaping, head of the Yangzhou Institute of Archeology, said that lab research had helped rediscover the materials and ancient techniques used for making a royal crown.
