Gilt-Bronze Funerary Urn of Ina no Omura

Inscribed with the Year 707, National Treasure since 1955

The Gilt-Bronze Funerary Urn of Ina no Omura (金銅威奈大村骨蔵器, Kondo Ina no Omura Kotsuzoki) is a gilt bronze urn kept at the Kyoto National Museum, designated a National Treasure in 1955, on 2 February. It had become an Important Cultural Property on 5 April 1909. The quantity is one lidded vessel, the category archaeological materials, and the designation number 00018.

The Agency for Cultural Affairs records the inscription and the find spot: bearing an inscription dated the twenty-first day of the eleventh month of the fourth year of Keiun, found at Anamushi in the former Nijo village, Kitakatsuragi county, Nara Prefecture. That year corresponds to 707, and both year fields read 707. The find spot is now Anamushi in Kashiba City.

A funerary urn holds the bones after cremation. The counter used in the record is for a vessel with a lid.

A Sphere That Parts into Two Hemispheres

The Kyoto National Museum notes what is unusual in the form: a spherical vessel whose lid and body divide into two hemispheres. It stands 24.2 centimetres high.

A sphere that opens across its middle. Funerary urns are commonly jar-shaped or box-shaped, and spherical ones are few. The museum notes one similar piece, uninscribed, said to have been found in Saga Prefecture.

The circumstances of discovery are also handed down. It came to light in the Meiwa era of the Edo period, and the urn is said to have been found beneath an inverted large jar. A jar set upside down over it, with the sphere beneath: that is the form the burial took.

The phrase is said to marks this as tradition rather than record. The discovery was in the Edo period, and how firmly it is documented is uncertain.

An Inscription of 391 Characters

What gives the urn its standing is the text cut inside the lid.

The museum records an inscription of thirty-nine lines of ten characters each, 391 characters in all, cut into the underside of the lid. That is a large text for an epitaph. Where the inscription on the gilt-bronze epitaph of Ishikawa no Toshitari gives lineage and office in a few dozen characters, this one sets out a career in detail.

It records that Ina no Omura was a descendant of Emperor Senka; that he took office in the reign of Empress Jito and became a lesser counsellor under Emperor Monmu; that with the promulgation of the Taiho code he was raised to junior fifth rank, entering the nobility; that in 705 he was appointed governor of Echigo; that he died in his post in 707; and that he was buried at Yamagimi-no-sato in Katsuragi-shimo county in his native Yamato, now Anamushi in Kashiba City.

He died at his posting and was buried at home. He died in Echigo, in present-day Niigata, and was carried back to Yamato in Nara.

The Records Differ on the Period

Accounts of the period of this urn do not agree.

The Agency for Cultural Affairs gives the period as Nara, with both year fields reading 707 and a commentary line, material of the Nara period. The Kyoto National Museum gives the Asuka period, 707.

The Nara period is conventionally taken to begin in 710, three years later. The year itself is the same in both records; only the name of the period differs. This article follows the year and notes the difference in the period label.

The same pattern appears with the Copper Epitaph of Funashi Ogo, of 668, and with the Sufukuji foundation stone deposit of the later seventh century. Archaeological materials of the later seventh and early eighth centuries keep receiving Nara in the Agency's period field.

Seeing It

The Kyoto National Museum records the owner as Shitennoji in Osaka, while the Agency's database leaves the owner field blank and gives the location and holding institution as the Kyoto National Museum. Owned by Shitennoji, kept at the museum.

It is not necessarily on permanent display, and whether and when it is shown depends on the museum's programme. Hours and admission vary with the exhibition, so check before travelling.

Anamushi in Kashiba City, where it was found, is in Nara Prefecture. Find spot in Nara, owner in Osaka, place of keeping in Kyoto: three prefectures.

The museum is about seven minutes on foot from Keihan Shichijo Station.