Hello everyone, I take the time out of my busy schedule today to bring you the following article, welcome to taste it together!
The water of the Yellow River rises from the sky and flows all the way, and it is in this vast Yellow River plain that Chinese civilization was conceived and born.
Located in the middle and lower reaches of the Yellow River, Henan is an important birthplace of Chinese civilization, from the first dynasty of ancient China, the Xia Dynasty to the fall of the Qing Dynasty, more than 4,000 years of history, Henan has been selected as the capital city many times, for more than 3,000 years, Henan has been the political, economic and cultural center of the country.
To modern people, Henan, as a major archaeological province in China, seems to be full of treasures.
Even an ordinary old man can catch an "antique" turtle while fishing in the river.
This turtle has four arrows on its back, although it is strange in shape, but why does it have such a huge value?
First, fishing caught a "turtle"?
In the territory of Anyang, Henan, there is an ancient river - Huanhe, as early as the oracle bones excavated from Yin Ruins, there is a record of "Huanquan", so this big river has a history of at least 3,000 years.
For thousands of years, the people on the banks of the river have loved to fish on the Huan River in their leisure time.
One day in 2003, an old uncle came to the Huan River to fish as usual, but sat on the shore for a long time without harvest, and the old uncle was a little discouraged for a while, so he thought of packing up his things and returning home.
When the old man tried to take back the fishing line, he couldn't pull the fishing line.
It may be entangled in something, the old man thought in his heart, the old man with many years of fishing experience is already accustomed to this.
Because there has always been a legend of "fishing guys" in the rivers and lakes, and even in the "fishing circle" there has always been a saying that "fishing guys never have an air force", which means that every fishing enthusiast will set up a "flag" that will never come back empty-handed before setting off, and because of this, fishing enthusiasts will often have some unexpected gains.
Thinking of this, the old man did not want to go home empty-handed, so he still decided that it was a big deal to pull the fishing line back with a lot of effort, no matter what was pulled, it was also the harvest of this trip.
It took a lot of effort for the old man to pull the fishing line back, and he fixed his eyes on it and was surprised to find a "turtle" wrapped around the end of the fishing line.
This "turtle" stretches its limbs, and even its head is exposed, and the whole takes on a crawling form.
However, the "turtle" caught by lao Bo was very different from the usual "turtle".
In fact, the turtle that Lao Bo caught was a bronze model, and under each claw there was a small column shaped like a button as a support.
What's even more unusual is that this turtle also has four feather arrows inserted in its shell.
When lao bo saw this strange shape, he was very curious in his heart, plus this "turtle" was glowing blue, maybe bronze, and decided to bring this "windfall" back.
In 2002, the state relaxed the permission for individual collection and trading of cultural relics in the Law on the Protection of Cultural Relics, and for a time, antique collection became a boom.
In 2003, CCTV launched the "Treasure Hunting" program, which pushed the antique collection to a climax.
Perhaps the inadvertent discovery of "bottles and cans" is a valuable treasure, which is tantamount to the precious opportunity of "one step to the sky" for people at that time, everyone has begun to pay attention to some "old things", even construction workers in the work began to pay attention to whether they dug up whether it is "treasure", "antiques" and "cultural relics" These concepts began to enter the homes of ordinary people.
The old man was no exception, he had usually heard that someone had picked up antiques, and he secretly thought to himself that maybe what he caught this time was an antique.
But at that time, lao Bo could never have imagined that this strangely shaped object could have a history of three thousand years, and it was most likely a bronze from the Shang Dynasty.
Second, it is a bronze shrew like a book
It's a "shrew" and not a "turtle."
Back at home, the old man and his son decided to report the object to the relevant departments for identification after some discussion.
The experts made a meticulous investigation of the bronze "turtle" and came up with a result that surprised everyone.
This bronze is actually a bronze shrew, because it belongs to the turtle turtle order with the turtle, plus this bronze is not large, from the beginning to the end of the total length of 21.4 cm, the widest place is 16 cm, the height of 10 cm, so the old man recognized it as a turtle.
Shrew, is a turtle turtle animal, the big turtle is often called the turtle, for this word, everyone seems to be very unfamiliar, but in fact, the shrew has long appeared in everyone's eyes.
In "Journey to the West", the weasel is the huge turtle of the Tongtian River, and the four Tang monks and disciples finally took the True Scriptures and crossed the Tongtian River, which was the river crossed by this big shrew, but people always thought that this was a huge "turtle".
In ancient times, the imagery of the shrew has always been alternating between good and bad for people, and in the Shang Dynasty, because the shrew was the largest of the turtle family, it was believed that the shrew was a fierce animal and difficult to catch.
However, in ancient times, there were many myths and legends about the shrew, because the shrew survived for a long time, and people even combined the shrew with the story of the Nüwa patching up the heavens, and regarded the shrew as a creator-like existence.
Four arrows on the back armor
But why is there four more arrows on the shell of this bronze shrew?
On the left side of the shell behind the shrew were two arrows inserted obliquely, one was inserted obliquely in the right rear, and an arrow was embedded in the left side of the neck, both of which were embedded in the body of the shrew, revealing only the tail of the arrow.
With this doubt, the experts focused their attention on the inscription that appeared in the middle of the back armor.
On the back armor of this shrew, there are four lines of inscriptions, a total of 32 characters.
After research, these texts are believed to be the writings of the late Shang Dynasty, and by examining these texts, people can know what the purpose of this bronze shrew is.
After some research, the experts roughly translated what these inscriptions say, which roughly means:
During the Bingshen period, the king was hunting on the huan river, and the king shot one arrow, and three arrows were shot, and all of them were hit, so the king gave the shrew he had shot to the album, and in order to commemorate this matter, the book made this treasure and presented it to his mother.
"Album-like" is not a personal name, but an official position of the Shang Dynasty, a historian who records history in the later years of the Shang Dynasty.
Because the people of the Shang Dynasty had not yet invented paper that was convenient for recording, people at that time wrote on the bamboo book, and the historian always followed the emperor, carving the major events that happened to the emperor on the bamboo jane, turning it into a historical record and preserving it, so there was the title of "work book".
It is the name of the person, but in ancient times it was generally called by the term of official position + personal name, so it was like a book.
At this point, the truth seems to have been revealed, and this bronze shrew is likely to have been created in the late Shang Dynasty to commemorate Wang's superb archery.
So, just by virtue of the inscription on the bronze shrew's back armor, can it be proved that this is a bronze artifact from three thousand years ago? This looks more like a "self-justifying" cover-up.
In this regard, some experts have found records in the historical records, which are recorded in the Book of Rites, during the Western Zhou Dynasty, Tianzi would practice archery in Zezhong, and it is also recorded in the Huainanzi that people in ancient times had taken the weasel as the object of shooting.
Therefore, the Shang King's shooting of the shrew embodied in this bronze shrew may exist.
The inscription on the 1993 tussock records the Western Zhou Dynasty's great archery ceremony, along with the words "Dead Waste Arrow", which is the same as the words on the bronze shrew's back armor.
So is there such a person as a book? Experts also examined this.
It is recorded in the inscriptions of the album-like urns collected in the National Museum of China that the shang king rewarded some money and shells in a sacrifice, and afterwards, the album made these money into a bronze pendant.
It turns out that the Shang Dynasty did have a book of people, and this official often made some rewards into bronze, which shows that this tradition of commemorating or remembering merit with bronze also exists.
In addition, some scholars have proposed that according to the tail of the arrow on the back armor, the tail feathers of the arrow are extremely similar to the details of the number of tail feathers recorded in the historical records, but because this bronze is not the original size, there is still room for discussion whether it is equally proportional.
Not only that, the use of modern technology to analyze the element content in this bronze shrew, these are within a reasonable range.
This evidence provides additional evidence for experts to confirm the authenticity of the bronze shrew.
Experts said that if this bronze really belongs to the bronze shrew of the late Shang Period, then the cultural relics and research value it contains are very large.
Because this bronze shrew is the only bronze artifact found on the Shang Dynasty archery ceremony, it fills the gap in the history of Chinese archaeology for the Shang Dynasty archery culture, and will help Chinese scholars to deeply study the Shang Dynasty archery culture.
Donated to the National Museum
This judgment of the experts surprised lao bo, who did not expect that one of his inadvertent discoveries would bring him such a great fortune.
But for this "pie in the sky" thing, the old man is still a little worried.
In 2003, the National Museum of China was established and openly collected cultural relics from the whole society.
In the face of the national museum's collection, out of the awareness of cultural relics protection, Lao Bo decided to donate this album-like bronze shrew to the National Museum.
Lao Bo said that if this bronze shrew is allowed to collect, it cannot play its due value, but it is better to hand it over to the National Museum, so that it can really play a role.
The National Museum was very grateful for lao bo's donation, gave him some bonuses, and awarded him an honorary certificate.
The bronze shrew was thus collected in the museum, and according to the inscription on its back armor, experts took its name as "album-like bronze shrew".
After the album-like bronze shrew was exhibited in the museum, because of its unique shape, interesting netizens jokingly called it "four arrows of the turtle heart".
People who visit the museum seem to be able to see the memories of a dynasty hidden in this album-like bronze shrew and the source of Chinese "rituals" from it.
Third, the authenticity is doubtful
The album-like bronze shrew has been controversial since its inscription in the museum, and archaeologists have studied many aspects of the collection.
A unique bronze
Bronze in the Xia Shang Zhou period, is the existence of tools, one of its characteristics is its practicality, whether used as a food vessel, wine vessel, musical instruments, etc., bronze ware has shown its functional role in all aspects of life and other aspects.
Even bronzes in the shape of animals such as bronze shrews, such as elephant statues, are generally used to hold wine.
Of course, in ancient times, there were also commemorative cultural relics such as bronze shrews, such as turquoise bones embedded in the Shang Dynasty, which were to commemorate the incident of the Shang king hunting tigers in the field and rewarding the ministers, so an inscription was engraved on the bones of the tigers for record, but like the bronze shrew, there is only one example of directly making bronzes.
Raise questions about authenticity
It is precisely because of this uniqueness that the unique appearance of the bronze shrew has attracted a lot of controversy.
In 2006, the China Cultural Relics Newspaper published an article on the authenticity of the album-like bronze shrew, which pointed out that the shape of the album-like bronze shrew was not reasonable, and there were also doubts about its copper and rust color.
In this regard, the Chinese Museum has also come out to respond, and many scholars have also made arguments from various aspects of the doubt.
Experts and scholars who have participated in the appraisal have also doubted the shape of the album-like bronze shrew, but after considering many historical materials, experts believe that such an "eclectic" bronze may be a work full of realism.
Because shrews are not as easy to preserve as animal bones, even the back armor of shrews is easy to decay, so it is not unreasonable to make bronze from the shrews rewarded by the Shang king.
But at the same time, the museum also pointed out that they welcome scholars to have a deeper discussion of authenticity and falsity, and for some scholars to question, the more the so-called truth is more and more clear, these controversies and discussions will also be conducive to the study of bronze shrews.
epilogue:
This rod of The Old Uncle of Henan caught a bronze shrew like a book, and the donation of the Old Uncle of Henan brought wealth to the whole society was priceless.
As a witness and store of history, in each cultural relic, we seem to be able to glimpse the history of that time, feel the origin and development of human civilization, and realize the continuation of cultural genes.
It is true that due to the complexity of cultural relics identification, the current cultural relics identification technology is still in the stage of continuous development, we still aspire to a pair of "fire eyes and golden eyes" to distinguish the authenticity, for the identification of non-excavated cultural relics, experts and scholars need to have an academic attitude of "a hundred schools of thought".
History is the best textbook, and cultural relics are the best "living dictionary" to annotate history, in the face of the long history of China, our countless Sons and Daughters of China can stand more confidently on the world stage, tell Chinese culture, and let the world listen to our Chinese Chinese story.
The protection of cultural relics has a long way to go, and it is necessary for the whole society to devote itself to it and consciously be the guardian of cultural relics and the disseminator of culture.
bibliography
[1] National Museum: Album-like shrew
[2] Three Examinations of the Bronze Shrew, Chinese Historical Relics, Wang Guanying, 2005-01
[3] The album-like copper shrew is doubtful and realistic, China Cultural Relics Daily, 2006
[4] On "The Doubts of the Copper Shrew in the Album", Wang Guanying, China Cultural Relics Daily, 2006.3