Chapter Ninety-Nine: New Quest Triggered!
Tomb M2 is busy cleaning the sealed soil of the burial chamber.
On the side of tomb M1, it is also busy clearing the sand mound.
After more than half a month of hard work, the volume of the sand mound, which was originally piled up into a mountain, has been reduced by nearly half.
Bronze bells, bronze tripods, copper mustaches, copper reeds, copper ge, copper arrowheads, bronze chariots and horses, stone chimes, jade and other utensils and fragments have been cleaned and extracted from them one after another.
Some of the relatively complete artifacts have been sent to the temporary cultural relics preservation room to study the age and identity of the tomb owner.
Because Chen Han showed the limelight before the field of ancient literature research, he was also pulled by Professor Li to "guess the characters by looking at the pictures".
Next to the excavation site, in the mobile board house.
Chen Han was wandering around a big ding.
"Although the artifacts found so far are very exquisite, the overall number is not much, and the combination of types is not complete, which is not commensurate with the scale of the tomb!"
Chen Han smashed his mouth and said with a sigh: "It seems that the theft of Tomb M1 is very serious, and there are not a few ritual artifacts left. ”
According to the specifications of this tomb, it should be a prince-level tomb.
According to the Chinese funeral ritual system, the princes should be buried with seven tripods and six guis.
The tripod and the gui look similar, except that one is a utensil for cooking food, and the other is a utensil for holding food.
Both kinds of utensils are with two ears, the difference is that the gui is a round mouth, two ears, no legs, while the tripod is a large mouth, the three-legged one is generally round, and the four-legged one is generally square.
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These two utensils are actually a set, one is used to cook things, and the other is used to hold cooked things.
In Chinese legends, Xia Yu once collected the gold of Jiumu and cast Jiuding under Jingshan Mountain to symbolize Kyushu.
Since then, the tripod has developed from an ordinary cookware to a national heavy weapon.
When the country is destroyed, Ding moves, the Xia Dynasty is destroyed, the Shang Dynasty is prosperous, Jiuding moves to Xing, and Jiuding moves to Luoyi, the capital of Zhou. From the Shang to the Zhou, the Dingdu or the establishment of a dynasty was called "Dingding".
Since then, the "Nine Tripods and Eight Pillars" have become a symbol of the central power.
In the Spring and Autumn Period, the Duke of Chu Zhuang once asked Gongsun Man, the envoy of King Zhou Ding, "the size and weight of the crown", the meaning behind it is actually to ask the importance of the country, and it is intended to covet the power of the country.
Therefore, for the nobles in the feudal period, the tripod represents their own rights, and they must be buried with them.
According to the Zhou rites, the nobles had strict regulations on the types and quantities of tripods and guis.
The Son of Heaven uses nine tripods and eight tripods, the princes have seven tripods and six tripods, the doctor has five tripods and four tripods, and the scholars have three tripods and two tripods.
Although it is said that during the Spring and Autumn Period and the Warring States Period, the etiquette collapsed and the music was broken, and the nobles sometimes exceeded the system when they were buried, but there was definitely no self-degrading.
However, in the fill excavated from Tomb M1, only two tripod vessels have been found, and even one of them cannot be found.
Ding and Gui are both large utensils, and it is impossible to miss them.
And it's hard to shatter into a pile of fragments that don't even recognize the shape.
Therefore, there is only one possibility, the princes of the M1 tomb, when they were buried, were stolen by tomb thieves.
There are only two tripods left, and they are two badly damaged tripods.
The tripods of the Zhou Dynasty can be divided into 镬 (huò) tripods, shengding and shy tripods.
The tripod that Chen Han was observing was a wok tripod.
Unfortunately, this tripod is very badly damaged.
The wok tripod is a two-eared three-legged round tripod.
However, the woks in front of Chen Han only have one ear and part of the mouth, two feet, and part of the bottom.
However, the only remaining top surface is still very exquisite!
The lower abdomen is supported by the round hoofs and feet of the animal face, and the inner and outer sides of the attached ears are decorated with millet patterns, the neck and abdomen are each decorated with a wide range of corny patterns, and the root of the feet is decorated with floating withered animal face patterns.
Whether it is the level of carving, or a variety of delicate patterns, it is not inferior to other tripods that have been unearthed.
The level of exquisiteness can be nothing short of stunning!
But the more exquisite it is, the more Chen Han feels sorry for the broken tripod.
It's not all.
The other shengding, which was placed on the table next to it, was also badly damaged.
Shengding is a kind of three-legged tripod with a flat waist and two ears with an arc outward.
However, only part of the mouth, abdomen, flat bottom, feet, and some reptile attachments remain.
Both ears are damaged and all attachments have been detached.
It's only about half the height of the original tripod.
However, the remaining surface is decorated with shallow withered cantis patterns, and the neck also has floating withered cresting cantis patterns, filled with fine triangular geometric patterns and circle patterns.
The waist is decorated with a slightly narrow and slightly narrow ribbon of the beautieth beetle, and the lower embossing is decorated with a slightly wider ribbon of the beauties.
The foot surface is shallow and withered, the root of the foot is floating and withered on the head of the beast, the mouth bites the bottom of the belly, the eyebrows are raised and angry, and the nose is high.
On the waist and the edge of the mouth, there are six identical hollow cockroach pattern monsters, with their heads raised and their waists raised, their tails and claws, and they are crawling!
The head of the beast is floating and withering, the nose is convex, the double horns are upturned, and the mouth is on the outer edge of the mouth.
It can be seen from the remaining floating that the original whole vessel should be very exquisitely cast and superbly crafted!
It is estimated that these two tripods can be preserved, because they are too badly damaged, so they were not stolen by tomb thieves.
This kind of broken tripod should be very difficult to sell in ancient times, especially after the ban on private coinage in the Western Han Dynasty, this kind of tripod can't even be used for private coinage.
Therefore, the tomb robbers did not steal it, and it can be regarded as leaving a little valuable "legacy" for archaeologists.
"It's a pity that these two tripods are not only seriously damaged, but also the remaining tripod bodies have no inscriptions!"
Chen Han touched his chin and carefully checked back and forth, but did not find any inscriptions on these two tripods.
Whether you recognize it or not, whether you can see it or not, don't say it first.
At least there has to be an inscription to recognize it!
Professor Li also lamented: "Yes, it is very likely that the part of the inscription has been damaged. ”
Generally, the public who don't know much about archaeology, because the information they usually receive is what inscriptions are on this tripod and what inscriptions are found on that tripod.
Therefore, it is natural to think that as long as it is a two-week tripod, it will be engraved with an inscription.
Well, this impression is roughly not wrong.
Most of the bronze tripods in the two-week period will have inscriptions on them, and there are not many inscriptions on the general tripods, most of which record who the owner of this tripod is, when it was cast, and why it was cast.
A few more important tripods, engraved inscriptions will be more, maybe record a war, maybe record the life of the owner of the tripod, maybe record an important thing.
For example, the treasure of the National Museum: Ligui.
The inscription of 4 lines and 33 characters cast at the bottom of the abdomen records the famous battle of Makino in the battle of King Wu.
Let the Battle of Makino turn from a "legend" into a true history.
"Huh... Wrong! ”
Just when Chen Han and Professor Li were depressed.
inadvertently glanced at Chen Han, who was at the root of the ascension, and vaguely seemed to see some carved lines that did not look like patterns.
He immediately stretched out his head and leaned in, carefully swinging the square ding down diagonally.
A twisted and twisted hieroglyph Zhong Dingwen, which was more like a painting than a word, appeared in front of his eyes.
At first glance, he didn't recognize what it was.
It just feels a little bit familiar that can't be described.
The inscription on the Zhou Dynasty ritual vessel that he had seen in class quickly crossed Chen Han's head.
"I remember!"
"This word once appeared on the ritual vessel in the tomb of Marquis Yi of Zeng unearthed in 78!"
This is the word "Zeng" in Zhong Ding's text! ”
Just as Chen Han exclaimed, the system that had been hidden for a long time suddenly popped out of his mind.
"Trigger Mission: Solve the Mystery of the Past!"
"Reward: Unknown."