Description: Tian, or Heaven, had been used in China since the Western Zhou to indicate both the sky and the highest god. Examining excavated materials, Lillian Tseng shows how Han-dynasty artisans transformed various notions of Heaven--as the mandate, the fantasy, and the sky--into pictorial entities, not by what they looked at, but by what they looked into.
Brief description: Lillian Lan-ying Tseng is Associate Professor at the Institute for the Study of the Ancient World, New York University
Review Quotes: This remarkable book readably represents a formidable effort of research, drawing on the rich studies of history, art, and paleography that have accumulated over centuries, and particularly on the last forty years of archeology. Lillian Lan-ying Tseng colligates images that no one earlier has studied side by side, and draws from them quite original conclusions. I find her arguments ambitious, ingenious, and persuasive. . . . They show once and for all that pictures are as important as verbal records for understanding the history of cosmology and astronomy.--Nathan Sivin, Professor Emeritus of Chinese Culture and of the History of Science, University of Pennsylvania