In their exuberance they resemble the clay statues of Guardian Kings similarly found at the entrance to Buddhist temples.

Remains of food, desiccated but identifiable, were found in some of the unrobbed tombs and included grapes, plums, pears, pieces of meat and wheat.

According to Chinese beliefs, the afterlife was very similar to the life from which they had departed, and the deceased were therefore buried with goods and money they would require.

Many tombs also contained epitaph tablets for the dead and a funerary banner showing the Chinese mythological figures, Fuxi and Nüwa.

According to the Chinese histories, the Shiji and Hanshu, the original inhabitants east of the Tian Shan to the beginning of the first millennium AD, the Jushi, were a people who 'lived in felt-tents, kept moving in pursuit of water and grass for grazing, and had a fair knowledge of farming.'

Chinese archaeologists have undertaken over ten excavations at the Astana and Gaochang graveyards from 1959 onwards, unearthing 456 tombs, 205 of which contained manuscript fragments.

Later the manuscripts were transferred to the St Petersburg Branch of the Institute of Oriental Studies of the Russian Academy of Sciences.

Unlike the other expeditions, the Japanese monk-explorers were privately funded by Otani and so the finds were not deposited in public collections.

Although by 1926 the first expedition material was in the Imperial Gift Museum of Kyoto, by 1944 these items were in the hands of the private collector Teizo Kimura.

The Japanese Government had to repurchase them after the war and, along with some other items bought from other individuals, the collection was deposited in the Oriental Section of Tokyo National Museum, where it remains today.