West Asian Art in the Murals of Zhang Shiqing’s Tomb: Cultural Selection and Visual Representation in the Context of Local Adaptation

The Liao Dynasty culture among the northern nomadic peoples absorbed profound West Asian historical heritage and uniquely ingenious artistic essence to enrich its own diversity. These mural paintings of Liao tombs most concentratedly reflect this phenomenon. As a visual medium for cultural integration along the Steppe Silk Roads, their artistic expression profoundly reflects the Liao Dynasty’s process of absorbing West Asian art. This article examines the tomb of Zhang Shiqing 张世卿, a former Song subject, now an official of the Liao Dynasty. It employs image analysis alongside interdisciplinary theories from art history, geography, archaeology, and history, aiming to reveal the logic of localized adaptation of West Asian artistic elements—the zodiac signs (Greek: zōidiakos kyklos, “circle of animals”; Chinese: 黄道十二宫图) and the curved-neck pipa—within the murals. The article argues that multiple underlying factors within the Liao Dynasty’s political-cultural structure, Buddhist propagation, and functional demands drove both the zodiac signs and the curved-neck pipa to exhibit a pattern of knowledge-integration adaptation. This adaptation manifests as juxtaposition and fusion in visual composition, functional integration and recontextualization in spatial arrangement, achieving a creative transformation of West Asian artistic motifs. This process not only revitalized the ritual space of the murals but also represented the inevitable projection of dualistic systems within the cultural sphere of the Liao Dynasty.