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In August 1997, in Jingzhou, Hubei Province, several "lieutenants who touched the gold" appeared at the Qinjia Mountain stepping point. Before long, all the Chinese of the tomb were stolen, and the only thing left was a priceless national treasure.
Late that night, the villagers of Haolin Village in Jingzhou rested after a day of farm work, and there was nothing unusual in the empty fields except for sporadic frogs.
However, on this night, several figures sneakily appeared in Qinjia Mountain, which was less than 200 meters away from the village.
With shovels in their hands, they divided their work and arranged for people to look around, while digging a large-caliber earth hole in the ground, and then hurriedly stuffing a package into it.
Not long after, a dull explosion sounded, and it was actually the explosion of the No. 2 Chu Tomb of Qin Jiashan. The villagers probably heard such a loud noise late at night, worried about safety, and no one came out to check it out.
The next morning, the villagers went down to work as usual, and as they passed a vegetable patch where Tomb No. 2 was located, a pile of fluffy and sunken loess instantly caught their attention.
Since there are three Chu tombs with sealed soil on the Qinjia Mountain, the villagers speculated that this was probably used to blast the ancient tombs, so they hurriedly reported them to the local government.
Upon receiving the news, the cultural security department immediately organized an archaeological team to go to Qinjiashan to investigate, and sure enough, it found that the tomb robbers had excavated the ancient tombs in a directional blasting method.
Considering that the explosion seriously damaged the preservation conditions of Tomb No. 2, in order to rescue the cultural relics, experts decided to carry out rescue excavations of this ancient tomb.
After more than a month of excavation, the Second Tomb of Qinjiashan was completely presented in front of people. However, the situation at the scene made the experts can't bear to look closely, and in the southeast of the middle of the chamber, a large burglary hole appeared, followed by the looted East Room and the South Room.
In the burial chamber, there are only broken pottery pieces, small bronzes and lacquered wood objects that were discarded by the tomb thieves.
Even so, the experts still refused to give up the last chance to rescue the artifacts, and they meticulously excavated the rafters, hoping to gain some money.
As the lid of the inner coffin of the three coffins was lifted little by little, the experts saw that there was nothing inside the coffin except for a layer of black mud.
After the expectations were disappointed, the experts had to carry out the final cleaning of the tomb according to the usual procedures. At this moment, an archaeologist was cleaning up the silt on the head of the owner of the tomb, but suddenly touched a circular object in the silt.
He picked it up and looked at it like a broken bronze mirror. After some cleaning, the experts found that it was actually a piece of jade, and there were artificially carved ornaments on the jade piece.
Experts quickly cleaned the skull of the owner of the tomb, and found that the owner's face was also covered with a large piece of jade.
After splicing, it can be inferred that these two pieces of jade should have been a complete jade mask in the shape of a human face, which is archaeologically called a jade covering.
The jade cladding is about 20 cm long, 13.9 cm wide and 0.23 cm thick, and is carefully carved from a single piece of dark green jade.
Not only that, the proportions of the five facial features of the jade covering are coordinated, and the pattern is carved in the hair, eyebrows and beard, etc., and the lines are relatively smooth and rounded, which is obviously the maker's knife workmanship is quite good.
Around the jade cladding, there are also eight small round holes. Correspondingly, on both sides of the tomb's head, two pieces of jade pendants and one piece of jade are buried, forming a complete combination with the jade covering.
According to experts, these round holes are likely to be used to tie objects such as small jade pendants and to fix the jade covering on the face.
So, what is the unique feature of the jade covering excavated from the Second Tomb of Qinjiashan this time?
In fact, it is not the first time that jade coverings have been found in China, but the jade coverings of the pre-Qin period excavated in the past are often made of several thin pieces of jade, like this excavation is made of a whole piece of jade.
The appearance of jade coverings as funerary objects is actually related to the ancient people's understanding of jade. The ancients generally believed that jade could be pure and flawless, and had the effect of warding off evil spirits and blessings, believing that the wearer could be safe and rich, and later became a symbol of the magnate.
Under the influence of this culture, a special kind of funerary jade appeared in the Western Zhou Dynasty, that is, jade covering, which was used to cover the face of the deceased during burial, also known as burial jade.
Interestingly, the jade cladding unearthed from Qinjiashan is wide and narrow, which should be to match the face shape of the ancient Chu people, which can be inferred that the Chu people at that time should be a more standard melon face.
Today, this jade cladding has been rated as a national first-class protected cultural relic and is collected in the Jingzhou Museum.
(The picture and text originate from the original author of the online copyright)
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