When archaeology was introduced to East Asia at the beginning of the twentieth century, among the first sites to be explored were two large concentrations of tombs and ruins located, respectively, in the vicinity of P'yongyang (North Korea) and the Manchurian town of Fan (Jilin Province, China). The remains were from the outset identified as those of the capitals of the state of Koguryo, mentioned in dynastic records. Of the various tomb-types subsequently excavated at these two sites, stone-chambered tombs bearing polychrome murals have attracted particular attention for their distinctive construction and rich pictorial content. Dubbed “the muraled tombs of Koguryo”, scholars have equated this burial-form with elites of the state of Koguryo and looked to their murals as a means to reconstruct the social and cultural forces at work in this seminal, yet controversial, period of early Korean history. This dissertation addresses two main concerns: One is to review prevailing interpretations of the Koguryo muraled tombs and to offer a critical appraisal of the methodological assumptions and issues that have shaped the idea of the muraled tombs as an historical topos. The second is to attempt to move away from the ramified formalism of traditional stylistic and iconographic analysis and seek to situate the muraled tombs as a symbolic assemblage that was deployed for communicative effect within a historically specific milieu of social and cultural practice. These concerns are pursued through close study of Anak Tomb no. 3 and the Tomb of Zhen/Chin at Tokhungri—two muraled tomb sites that are unique in the fact that they contain inscriptional records of the circumstances and dates of their construction (357 and 409 A.D., respectively). The representational parameters and function of muraled tomb and epigraph are established through broad study of these practices among contemporaneous continental Chinese and regional Northeast Asian elites. Their adoption at fourth century P'yongyang and Ji'an sites is shown to be connected with shifts in symbolic strategy that accompanied the emergence of a new local elite and the generation of a new discursive presence of “Koguryo.”.