Hover to play loop & narration. Visual depiction; cultural attribution in the metadata below.
Vol. V · Deified Humans
Wu Zetian
the only female emperor of China who claimed to be an incarnation of Maitreya the future Buddha
giant cliff-carved Buddhas bearing her face gazing over her dominion
Source attribution
This visual depiction is one of 1,947 in the archive — a creative historical rendering of how this culture has expressed the divine. The depiction is interpretive, not iconographic.