"The princess and her consort were dressed and equipped to mount their steeds and ride off across the steppes of their fiefdom," writes Linda Cooke Johnson, a professor of history at Michigan State University in the United States, in her book on gender and identity of women from Liao and Jin, two Chinese dynasties founded by nomadic people. Here, Johnson discusses the final resting place for a princess — known as the Princess of the State of Chen — of China's Liao Dynasty (916-1125) and how she was interred with her husband by her side and with almost everything needed for a pastoral life.

These included gilt silver boots worn by the couple that resembled"modern Western riding boots" to quote Johnson, as well as various horse gear — gilt copper chest traps, bridles and stirrups for example. There's even a copper burning mirror for starting a fire and a jade arm shield on which a hunting eagle could alight every time it returned to its master.

Such a life is within the imagination of those who visit Suzhou Museum where an exhibition focusing on the life of the Khitan women of the Liao Dynasty is on view.

"The Liao people lived on horseback. Even empresses and royal concubines were accomplished archers and riders who followed their husbands in military campaigns as well as leisure hunting trips," says the exhibition's curator Xu Xincheng, quoting Liaoshi, or The Annals of Liao, compiled during the mid-14th century.

According to an epitaph of a certain Concubine Xiao from Liao that has survived to date, the lady always"withheld her shot until she was certain of hitting her prey".

That depiction could have served as an apt metaphor for Shulyu Ping, wife of Liao's founder Yelyu Abaoji. Playing an indispensable role in her husband's highly controversial ascendance to power, she almost never failed to deliver fatal blows to her foes, on and off the battleground.

Her remarkable military skills and political maneuvering were passed on to the future imperial wives of Liao, most notably her own great-granddaughter Xiao Chuo, who was in turn the paternal grandmother of the Princess of the State of Chen. Wife to the fifth emperor of Liao, Xiao Chuo acted as the powerful regent for her teenage emperor son upon the death of her husband and effectively presided over the Liao court for 27 years until her own passing in 1009.

Equally celebrated as a warrior and a peacemaker, Xiao Chuo commanded armies during Liao's prolonged war with its neighbor, the Northern Song Dynasty (960-1127), before allowing a peace treaty to be signed that ushered in approximately a century of relative peace for the two major powers.

Some researchers have suggested that the crucial part played by the noblewomen of Liao, reflective of the larger situation across different social strata, could have stemmed from the traditional role of Khitan women who administered the family encampment during their husbands' long absences.

On the whole, gender division was less closely observed in the Liao society than it was in Northern Song, dominated by the Han Chinese.

However, strong elements of the Han Chinese culture did make their way into the life of Khitans, giving rise to, among other things, a tendency to "link education with(feminine) virtue" to quote Johnson, who studied the epitaphs of Liao women.

On display at the Suzhou Museum exhibition are a beautifully carved jade water container and a jade inkstone, items typically belonging to the study of a Han Chinese scholar. Both were from the burial chamber of the princess and her husband.

In 1974, a Liao Dynasty tomb was discovered in the town of Yemaotai in Northeast China's Liaoning province. The deceased — an elderly woman — was dressed in Khitan style with gold embroidered boots on her feet and horse equipment stored in one of the side chambers. However, the two exceptionally well-preserved hanging scroll paintings — the only two of its kind ever unearthed from a Liao burial ground — speaks for the tomb owner's love of classical Chinese culture.

In fact, some would argue that the pastoral and the scholarly had always been the two sides of a Liao woman, pointing to the fact that Empress Shulyu Ping was also credited with inventing a written form of the Khitan language.

According to the Annuals of Liao, upon the death of Abaoji, the formidable empress, with one swift stroke of her sword, cut off one of her own arms, which she then asked to be buried with the emperor. Some scholars have suggested it was the fingers that she severed.

While the authenticity of the incident has long been contended, the aristocratic women of Liao had clearly broken what Johnson considers a steppe tradition for wives to follow their husbands in death, a fact that testifies to the growing social status and self-awareness of the Khitan women during the Liao time.

"By this time, probably under the influence of China's central dynasties, the Khitan elite had largely abandoned their earlier funerary customs of embalming and drying the body — often in the open air. Well-furnished tombs were constructed for the deceased to continue their life as it once was," says Xu, the curator.

Sharing the same stone funerary bed with her husband, the Princess of the State of Chen had a miscellany of things dangling from her waist. These included, apart from jade and amber pendants, a cylindrical gold sewing case for needles and a gold pouch with an openwork design that was possibly influenced by the Northern Song style.

There was also a pair of small gold cases with attaching chains."These could be face powder containers, allowing the princess to give her makeup a few touch-ups without having to get off the saddle," says Xu.

In her epitaph, the highborn princess, who died at 18, was said to have carried herself with a combination of dignity and humility. "She adhered reverently to feminine virtues," reads the epitaph — the words reminiscent of Confucian teachings. Yet, as a child, she was"smart and skilled in argument".

"The end comes to all, but for the princess, it has arrived a little too soon," reads the final sentence of the epitaph.