Queen Seondeok and the Star Tower

Why would someone who held the greatest power in the land spend it on a stone tower less than 10 meters tall, only to look at the sky?

It is a real question, and it is much harder than it looks.

Rulers usually do very different things. They order a larger palace. They raise a thicker ring of city walls. They cast a bell so big that the whole capital can hear it ring. Everyone understands why rulers do such things.

Yet in Gyeongju, in the 7th century, the one on the throne built something very small. Gyeongju was then the capital of Silla, one of the three kingdoms of ancient Korea. From a few dozen paces away, the eye takes in the whole of this building. It was not a home. It was not a storehouse for treasure. It had no great door to walk through, only one tiny square window halfway up its body.

That ruler was named Seondeok. She was the daughter of King Jinpyeong. She came to the throne in 632. She was the 27th ruler of Silla, and the first woman to rule it. She reigned until 647.

The tower she had built is called Cheomseongdae. Loosely translated, the name means a platform for watching the stars.

In Gyeongju today it still stands just as it always has, alone in the middle of a wide lawn. At the bottom is a square stone base set right on the ground. From the base rises a round body that swells gently around the middle and then narrows toward the top, like a giant clay jar. It is more than nine meters tall. The foot is about five meters across, and the top is only about three meters. At the very top, two layers of stone form a square frame. People believe that frame once held instruments for watching the sky.

From a distance it is only a quiet gray mass of stone. But up close, anyone patient enough to count will find the best thing about it.

The body of the tower is not one solid piece. It is made of rings of stone stacked one on another, each block curved like the rib of a fan. Counting from the bottom up, there are exactly 27 rings.

Twenty-seven. It matches the woman who had it built, the 27th monarch of Silla.

Then comes the number of stones, and this is where it gets strange. Not everyone who counts arrives at the same figure. Some have counted 365 stones, the number of days in a year. Others have counted 362. A survey in 1962 recorded 366.

Arguing over a few stones may sound petty. But one thing stands out. Whichever way they are counted, the final figure always lands close to the number of days in a year.

Then there is the square window halfway up. It faces south. Below it are 12 rings of stone, and above it are 12 more. Together they make 24. People believe the twelve stand for the months of the year. The twenty-four would stand for the 24 solar terms. These are the markers that divide the year into smaller parts. Farmers relied on them to know when the cold would come, when the rains would fall, and when to sow.

Here the opening question begins to take a different shape.

In a land that lived on its grain, what decided between a full belly and an empty one was not a city wall. It was the question of which day to sow. Sow too early, and the seed meets the cold. Sow too late, and it meets the floods. In those days there were no calendars on the wall and no weather reports in the evening. The only way to know how far the season had come was to look up at the sky. Then what they saw had to be written down steadily, year after year.

Farmers in northern Vietnam once did exactly the same, only without a stone tower. Before dawn, they watched for the Pleiades to rise, to know it was time to sow the rice seedlings.

Seen that way, Cheomseongdae is no ornament of the royal court. People regard it as a farming clock made of stone, raised for people who never once set foot inside the palace.

One more thing must be said honestly. After nearly 1,400 years, people still do not agree on exactly how the tower was used. Most see it as a place for watching the sky. They count it as the oldest observatory still standing intact in Asia. But since the 1960s, some researchers have argued that it was also an altar, a place for rituals.

No one knows for sure how the ancient observers worked, either. The lower part of the body, below the window, is filled with earth and rubble. So the idea of someone climbing up there every night is only one of many explanations. It has never been proven.

But one thing is certain. The tower has stood for nearly 1,400 years. It has come through rain and storms, through many earthquakes, through all those lifetimes, and it still keeps its old shape. On December 20, 1962, it was listed among the National Treasures of South Korea. Its number is 31. Later, UNESCO inscribed the whole historic area of Gyeongju around it on the World Heritage List.

Koreans tell two more stories about Seondeok herself. To be plain from the start, these are folk tales, handed down from one generation to the next. They are not things that have been proven.

The first is the tale of the peonies. It is said that the Tang emperor of China sent her a few handfuls of peony seeds. With them came a painting of the flower in three colors: red, white and purple. She looked at the painting for a long while, and then she said that these flowers would have no scent. Her courtiers asked why. She answered that the painting showed only flowers, without a single butterfly. The seeds were sown in the palace garden. When the season came, the flowers were truly beautiful, but just as she had said, they had no fragrance.

The second story is gentler. It is said that a little while before she died, she called her courtiers together. She told them in advance where she wished to be laid to rest.

Both stories are good ones, and Koreans still love to tell them. But what has lasted in Gyeongju through all these centuries is not a few peony blossoms, nor a foretelling. It is a few hundred gray stones laid in 27 rings.

At the foot of the tower, the best thing to do is simple, and very few people take the time for it. Stand still beneath it. Look up. Then count the rings of stone one at a time, slowly, without hurrying.

First come 12 rings. The 13th, 14th, and 15th hold the square window that faces south. Then 12 more rings reach the top. Twenty-seven.

When the counting is done, look a little higher, past the top of the tower. That is the very patch of sky that someone, nearly 1,400 years ago, made a whole tower of stone turn to face. The sky is still where it was. And the stars the people of Silla looked up at then are still there tonight, to be seen again.