Pompous Funeral of the King of Tonkin

The scene is captured in two levels. The first shows the funeral procession on the mainland, where the king’s corpse laid on a funeral chariot is drawn by eight stags. The second scene is depicted in an illusively rendered tapestry in the engraving’s upper part, where the king’s corpse is carried aboard the last of five ships. Tonkin is the name of the northern part of Vietnam bordering the Chinese provinces Yunnan and Guangxi in the north, Laos in the west and the South China Sea in the east.