Hello everyone, I take the time out of my busy schedule today to bring you the following article, welcome to taste it together!
Chinese has attached great importance to life and death since ancient times and has a unique culture of death. In the ancient people's idea of "death is like life", after death, they also hope to get the treatment before death. Then in addition to various funerary items, the most important thing is the coffin. From the word "coffin", it is not difficult to find that the coffin is related to wood, and most of the coffins in ancient mainland China are also wooden.
From agarwood to golden silk nan wood, the more precious the coffin made of precious wood, and naturally represents the filial piety of children. But in the history of the continent, there are not only wooden coffins, but also the legendary "copper hall". In the 1960s, Yunnan unearthed a copper museum, archaeologists learned of it and applied for protection overnight, but the superior replied: "directly melted", so what is the final result?
In fact, although bronze coffins are rare, they are not absent, take the most famous Mausoleum of Qin Shi Huang. In the "History of Qin Shi Huang Benji", it is recorded: "Under the copper and to the rafters, the palace view of the hundred officials and strange artifacts rare and strange migration Zang Manzhi", which means that qin shi huang's coffin is made of copper, but Sima Qian has not seen it with his own eyes, so it is uncertain.
Until 1964, in the village of Dabona in Yunnan, four people dug up a "golden house" weighing 5,000 kilograms, which was the only bronze coffin unearthed in the world. One of the four was a plasterer, and when he saw the copper pavilion, he knew that it must not be an ordinary object, but most likely an antique.
But others did not understand this, and people at that time generally did not have the awareness of cultural relics protection, so they thought of digging up the copper coffin and selling it for money. It turned out that this copper pavilion was incomparable, and the group felt tricky at the same time, they were also secretly happy, and such a heavy copper pavilion was worth a lot of money even if it was melted as scrap iron.
So the four people dismantled the copper pavilion, dismantled it into pieces of copper plates, and then moved it up piece by piece. However, when the copper hall was opened, the scene inside frightened the four people, only to see a corpse lying inside, the corpse was rotting only bones, looking very frightening and frightening. They knew they had dug the tomb, but the four still decided to take the copper coffin and melt it for sale.
It was only later that the local village secretary was alarmed, and he intervened to save the copper coffin. Soon under the notice of the village branch secretary, archaeologists rushed to the scene, they first inspected the copper coffin, and found that the copper museum was very distinctive. Originally, there was a vicious human face on one side of the copper coffin, while the other seven copper coffin plates were each carved with tigers, leopards, horses and other animals.
Experts conducted carbon isotope testing on the copper coffin and found that the copper coffin was excavated in the 4th century BC, that is, the Eastern Zhou to the Warring States period of the mainland. At that time, it was the stage of rapid development of bronze smelting technology, so it was no surprise that such a huge copper coffin was smelted. But soon archaeologists thought, since there is a copper coffin, does it mean that there is a large tomb here?
So the archaeologists immediately began to excavate, and sure enough, there was a large tomb hidden in the place where the copper coffin was found. Around the large tomb, there are many small tombs, forming a tomb group. However, in these tombs, only this copper coffin, that is to say, the owner of the copper coffin has the highest status.
After reviewing the relevant information, experts deduced that the owner of this bronze coffin may be the monarch of the ancient kingdom on the east bank of Dianchi Lake in Yunnan during the Eastern Zhou Dynasty, which explains why bronze was chosen as the coffin material. After all, in the mainland Central Plains culture, coffins are made of wood. At the same time, the copper drum found in the ancient tomb also further confirms the identity of the tomb owner, and the copper drum has been popular in Yunnan from a very early age, and it is a representative cultural relic of the ancient Dian state.
While the archaeologists were excited about the discovery, a message from a superior replied to them was like a scoop of cold water that extinguished their hearts. It turned out that after the discovery of the copper coffin, the archaeologists immediately informed the superiors, hoping to be protected. As a result, the higher authorities asked them to melt on the spot because the copper coffin was suspected of "four olds". Archaeologists find it absurd on the one hand, and regret it on the other. In the end, they decided to secretly save the copper coffin, which was stored in the village of Grand Bona.
Sure enough, in the 1970s and 1980s, the state began to attach importance to cultural relics and archaeological work, and the tomb group found in the village of Dabona was also valued, and was named the tomb of Dabona Village. The bronze coffin, as a national cultural relic, is collected by the Yunnan Museum. I am really glad that the archaeologists at that time did not follow the instructions to melt down the copper coffin, otherwise China would have lost another legendary cultural relic.