At first glance at this problem, I was also shocked, it was indeed a problem that I had not been exposed to. To tell the truth, most of the previous understanding of Zeng Houyi is a variety of rare and valuable cultural relics excavated in the tomb of Zeng Houyi, such as Zeng Houyi chimes, Zeng Houyi bronze plates and so on. This time, many small animals were found in Zeng Houyi's mouth, why was this so? JAL Jun also made his own guess.
What did Zeng Houyi find in his mouth?
Twenty-one animal-shaped jade stones were found in Zeng Houyi's mouth, including sheep, pigs, dogs, ducks, and fish. To tell the truth, it is important to have a mouth plug in the tomb, but why did Zeng Houyi have so many mouth plugs in his mouth? Here are some of my personal guesses.
Guess one: the anti-corrosion ideas of the ancients
There is a very famous novel called "Ghost Blowing Lights", in which people often do a lot of tricks in order to embalm the corpse. After all, every prince who will die wants to stay the same, not rot into a pile of bones. Methods include infusion of mercury, air drying, etc. One of the most important methods is to seal the seven tips for corrosion protection.
It seems that in the concept of the ancients, as long as the seven tricks are sealed, people can achieve the purpose of not decaying. The poor may directly put a copper plate and name it "mouth money" to achieve the goal; the rich naturally cannot be so perfunctory, and naturally they must use some gold and more expensive things, so there are gold plugs and jade plugs.
In addition to the mouth, there are jade plugs in Zeng Houyi's nose and ears, so I speculate that these animal jades may represent an antiseptic effect.
Guess two: Zeng Houyi is a foodie
Some people will say, put the plug on the plug, you put an ordinary plug on the line, why do you have to design it into the shape of various animals, I don't know if you think you are eating that kind of animal biscuit.
In fact, in the traditional Chinese concept, when a person dies, he is not dead, but goes to another world, so there is a concept of "things that die, such as things are born".
When we look at tombs, many times they are designed like houses, with beds, hangers, musical instruments, pottery figurines (servants), etc., which are all reserved for the owner of the tomb to use in another world.
Therefore, I deduced that Zeng Houyi may have been a delicious person before he died, so after his death, his descendants thought of the characteristics of Zeng Houyi's delicious food, so they specially designed the jade plug into the shape of an animal, so that Zeng Houyi could still eat and drink even after he arrived in another world.
Text: JAL Tongjian Map: From the Network and The Site, Invasion and Deletion