Chinese archeologists will dress up a king's carriages and horses dating back more than 2,000 years ago in central Henan Province with new chemical "clothes" to protect them against mold and efflorescence.

Since the new clothes for the "six horses for a king's carriage" in Luoyang, the country's political center millennia ago, is invisible, the appearance of the valuable horses and carriage will be well maintained, said archeologists of the city's museum on Tuesday.

"Making such clothes will take us about one or two weeks," said Guo Tingcai, head of the museum, where a set of ancient royal tombs dating back to the Eastern Zhou Dynasty (770 BC-256 BC) were unearthed in 2002.

Guo said experts and technicians from the Henan Provincial Institute of Culture Relics Research would use their own chemical prescription, which he was reluctant to further elaborate on.

The horses and carriage pit, which was excavated at a construction site in 2002, was compared to the world-renown Terracotta Warriors and Horses in Xi'an by some archeologists, as the new findings provided crucial evidence for the "six horses for a king's carriage" myth, which previously only recorded in historical works.

The pit contains six horse skeletons and one chariot, a form echoing historical records, which said the earliest Chinese kings rode in chariots pulled by six fine horses in wars.

Though the pit survived during the city's construction of a square, high temperature, ground water and mold proved hazardous to the relics.

"We have removed the redundant clay between those bones and skeletons and undercut the ground surface of the moist areas inside the pit," Guo said. "Harm to those horses by efflorescence and dust will be greatly reduced after the treatment with chemicals."

(Xinhua News May 18, 2005)