This paper focuses on how images that were related to planets or pagan gods in classical art and religion appeared in distant countries far from the cultures and societies in which they were born. Very little research has been done on this special form of dissemination as it affects the intercourse between the religious imagery of the ancient Western and Eastern worlds. As religious deities and artistic motifs traveled from ancient Mesopotamia, Greece, and Rome toward China along the Silk Road, the patterns and concepts would inevitably pass through Persia and Central Asia. Scholars have discovered many interesting depictions of the planetary deities of the West at the famous Buddhist site of Dunhuang in China, deities that became quite popular among Chinese astrologers at least prior to the Sui and Tang dynasties. Among these celestial gods, Mercury is a particularly representative case because astrologers in Mesopotamia, Greece, and Persia always regarded the deity as being a male god. In the paintings discovered in Dunhuang, however, Mercury is depicted as a woman, usually holding a scroll of paper and a brush in her hands. It is highly possible that the attributes and gender ambiguity related to Mercury originated from Mesopotamian traditions, or from assimilated Iranian elements, a topic that will require further study.
The earliest images of people playing the tao 鼗 , a small drum that was shaken in one hand similar to a drum-shaped rattle, and the jilougu 鸡娄鼓, a type of urn-shaped drum, which include specific dates can be found in the murals in Dong Shou's tomb in contemporary Anyue County, North Korea. These paintings were created in the thirteenth year of the Yonghe era （357 CE）; while the most recent depictions located in Zhang Zhilang’s tomb are from the Pingcheng era of the Northern Wei dynasty （460 CE）. Iconographic materials have rarely been taken into account in previous studies on the origins,history and evolution of ancient drum performances, and as a result, the current state of research is lacking a key source of information. According to identical images found in the tombs in the Hexi Regions and in Goguryeo, and based on an investigation of the horseback musicians beating the tao and the pi 鼙 （a kind of small drum used in the army） in the tombs of the Sixteen Kingdoms period in the Guanzhong Region, this paper has come to the conclusion that both types of performances originated from the wind and drum music of the Han dynasty, and that both were originally played as military music. Among these images, the paintings of musicians beating the tao and jilougu at the same time have been found in earlier depictions in the portrait bricks of the Wei and Jin tombs in the Hexi regions, and had a far-reaching impact on the tomb art of ancient China.
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