These clay figures were made to be buried in a tomb alongside a Chinese nobleman. At the time people believed that such items would be useful in the afterlife. The amount of things buried with a person showed how important they were and often thousands of objects would be placed in the tomb.

The riders have no weaponry which suggests that they were perhaps made for entertainment. They appear to be identical but in fact are all different: each rider has a different animal–skin saddle, the horses' heads are tilted slightly differently and the horsemen hold their hands at different heights. The more you look the more differences appear. This is because they represent individual real horses and riders.

Two thousand years before the creation of these objects real horses and riders would have been killed and buried with the important person; even family members were sacrificed and placed in the tomb.