On December 14, 2018, archaeology leader Peng Hui was directing personnel to clean up a tomb in Tangling Village, Changzhou City, and as the silt in the tomb decreased, a shocking scene appeared, a colorful coffin was completely exposed to people's eyes, it was red as blood, as new as if it had just been buried yesterday.
Three tombs were originally found here, the first two except to clear out a few pieces of rotten wood and two human bones, nothing else, originally Peng Hui no longer had hope for the third tomb, unexpected but unexpected surprises.
Judging from the initial judgment of the shape and scale of the tomb, the tomb should belong to the Song and Yuan dynasties, which is seven or eight hundred years ago, which is enough to destroy any wood products buried in the ground.
However, what is amazing is that there is no trace of any age on this coffin, which is the first time that Peng Hui has seen it in his archaeological career of more than ten years, which is really rare, so he is a little excited at the moment.
What are the important artifacts in the coffin? Who is the owner of the tomb? Will the body be well preserved? Peng Hui was full of endless expectations and reverie for this red coffin.
At this time, the edge of the tomb was full of curious crowds of onlookers, all stretching their necks to wait for the moment when the coffin was opened, and they all wanted to find out the secret buried in the depths of time.
However, at this time, Peng Hui made a decision: the coffin was packed and transported back to the Changzhou Museum.
On January 6, 2019, archaeologists gathered in the Changzhou Museum because the red coffin was about to open.
In order to understand the structure of the coffin and the general situation of the internal cultural relics, after consultation with experts, it was decided to perform an X-ray scan of the coffin before opening.
But after the instrument scanned, something strange happened, the screen was blank, and the scene in the coffin could not be seen at all.
X-ray is a kind of electromagnetic wave, the wavelength is very short, even the steel plate can penetrate, but at this time there is nothing to do about a coffin, what is the mystery?
There was a heated discussion in the museum, and soon came to an end: water! There was too much water in the coffin! Because water has a strong absorption effect on X-rays.
The red coffin is in the laboratory
Now that the problem has been identified, draining the water from the coffin is the number one priority at present. However, archaeologists found that the discharge of the coffin liquid is not so easy, the most important thing is where to open the hole?
After many discussions by experts, in order not to destroy the integrity of the coffin, it was finally decided to raise the coffin and drill a hole in the bottom of the coffin.
After the successful punching, a large amount of liquid gushed out, and it took more than ten hours to run out, and according to rough estimates, the liquid discharged from the coffin was as much as 500 liters.
Then an X-ray scan was performed again, and this time there was finally a clear image, the coffin was covered with multiple coffin nails, but these coffin nails were not visible on the outside, and in order to open the coffin lid, the coffin nails had to be removed, which would cause great damage to the integrity of the entire coffin.
Now a difficult problem has emerged, how to ensure the integrity of the lacquer coffin itself, but also to ensure the removal of the cultural relics in the coffin?
After the archaeologists and experts studied, it was finally decided to abandon the way the coffin lid was opened, but to open along the gap at the bottom of the coffin.
With the embedding of wooden wedges, the coffin is propped up as a whole, and then the coffin is slowly lifted and moved away by a small crane.
The space inside the coffin, which has been sealed for hundreds of years, is unobstructed, and the secret is no longer a secret.
The bottom of the coffin is a thick layer of silt, like "a pot of porridge", the owner of the tomb has become a dry bone, for a long time due to the presence of the coffin, the bones have long been displaced, it looks scattered and piled together.
Life is like a reverse journey, and I am also a pedestrian.
She was as alive as we were, and we will eventually become dry bones like her, dead and still.
After measuring and mapping the location of the contents of the coffin, the clean-up work began.
First of all, the bones of the owner of the tomb were extracted, followed by the removal of 5 wooden combs and 5 handles and 2 bamboo grates.
Pei jia made the words
Comb grate is a must-have thing for the ancients, thin teeth called "comb", dense teeth called "grate", combing hair with a comb, cleaning to remove scale with grate.
The production of grate is a traditional Chinese craft, the essence of the skill is especially in Changzhou as the most, there was a proverb: "Yangzhou rouge Suzhou flower, Changzhou comb grate first", so Changzhou has the reputation of "the hometown of comb grate".
In 2008, the production process of Changzhou carding grate was listed as a national intangible cultural heritage and became one of the three treasures of Changzhou.
The excavation of the multi-handled comb grate once again confirms that the combing grate manufacturing process in Changzhou has a long history.
Unearthed wooden comb
Three ink characters "Pei Jiazao" were also found on the comb grate, which is the first column of ancient bamboo grates with ink scripts found in Changzhou through archaeology, which is of great significance to the study of the history of combing grates in Changzhou.
Subsequently, three pieces of gold and silver jewelry were cleaned up, and the jewelry was engraved with the words "Mingqing Temple East Xu Yilang", and the archaeologists verified according to the literature that "Mingqing Temple" refers to the thousand-year-old temple located in Dajie Village, Yueqing City, Zhejiang Province. And "Xu Yilang" is the brand identity, just like the "Wang Mazi" in the kitchen knife industry now.
Golden Hairpin
Whether it is "Pei Jiazao" or "Mingqing Temple East Xu Yilang", it reflects that merchants in the Song and Yuan Dynasties had a strong sense of publicity for their own brands, and also showed the development of the commodity economy at that time.
As the cleanup continued, archaeologists extracted a pair of wooden chopsticks inside the coffin, which at the time appeared to be nearly one-third longer than it is now.
After extracting the wooden chopsticks, a porcelain cup attracted the attention of the archaeologists, and the porcelain cup actually had plum blossom ornaments, which was very special. After careful study, it is fully in line with the characteristics of Longquan kiln porcelain in the Yuan Dynasty.
Plum blossom porcelain bowl
It is concluded that this tomb should belong to the Yuan Dynasty, and the owner of the tomb is likely to have experienced the song and yuan alternate periods.
After statistics, a total of 23 cultural relics were cleared out of the coffin.
In order to better confirm the identity of the owner of the tomb, on February 28, 2019, the physical human experts of the Nanjing Museum specially rushed to the scene to identify it, and the results of the identification showed that the owner of the tomb in the red coffin was a woman, and the age of death was between 51 and 60 years old.
The two human bones found in the other two tombs, one was a man, aged 35-39, and the other was a young woman, aged between 27 and 28 years old.