Near Hanjiang County, Yangzhou City, Jiangsu Province, an ancient tomb has been unearthed, but it is strange that inside the coffin of the owner of the tomb, there are actually fake fragments of "golden jade clothes". What's going on here? What material did the ancients use to imitate the golden jade clothes? If you want to know, let Xiaobian reveal the secret for you:
In October 1977, near Houshan, Ganquan Commune, Hanjiang County, Yangzhou City, Jiangsu Province, members of the local brigade discovered a large ancient tomb underground while harvesting crops. The leaders of the commune, believing that the stakes were high, immediately informed the local archaeological institute and requested that archaeologists be sent to protect it. The director of the Institute of Archaeology did not dare to be idle, and immediately formed a team of experts to go to the site to investigate, and after layers of approval, began a large-scale conservation excavation.
Archaeologists have found through excavations that the tomb is a wooden tomb of the Western Han Dynasty, its sealing soil is only about 1 meter, the tomb as a whole faces due south, and the tomb road is sloped earthen pit style. Near the tomb door, there is a row of wooden squares arranged in a "T" shape, which is initially speculated to be used to block the outer sealing soil. The burial chamber is 7 meters long and 4.5 meters wide, and there are two 8-meter-long mats at the bottom of the tomb, and 12 bottom plates more than 30 centimeters thick are laid on the mats, which should be used to prevent the burial chamber from getting wet.
Throughout the burial chamber, archaeologists have found a large number of funerary artifacts, including a small number of gold and silverware, as well as a large number of wooden and bronze objects. It is worth noting that in the silt of the tomb, a silver seal engraved with the "Concubine Mo Book" has also been excavated, and its appearance has plunged the archaeologists present into a hot discussion.
The silver seal of the "Concubine Mo Book" is 1.7 cm high, 1.9 cm long, weighs about 31.4 grams, and is made of sterling silver throughout, with a turtle button shape. The turtle button form is extremely realistic, highlighting the ingenuity of the carvers at that time. The three characters of "Concubine Mo Shu" are all seals, the seal method is straight and square, the style is majestic and elegant, and it is an important symbol of the status of the master.
At this time, a question inevitably arises, what does the so-called "Concubine Moshu" mean? In the ancient feudal patriarchal society, why did the word "concubine" appear on the seal? Archaeologists have put forward their own view that during the Western Han Dynasty, court women generally called themselves "concubines", including the emperor's wives and concubines, palace women, and female officials. Generally speaking, the empress and the imperial concubine and the palace maid belong to the harem, and there is no need to wear a seal letter, but only the female official will wear the seal on her body in order to prove her identity. From this point of view, the tomb owner who wears the "Concubine Mo Book" is likely to have an official position before his death as "Zhaoyi" or "Jieyu".
The types of seals found in the tombs of "Concubine Moshu" are actually very rare in archaeological history, and can be regarded as a strange flower in many Han Dynasty tombs in the archaeological community. However, the real highlight of the tomb is not here, on the contrary, some strange "jade pieces" in the tomb seem to attract the attention of archaeologists. Inside the coffin in the tomb, the bones of the owner of the tomb have long been decayed, and most of the cultural relics that have been cleaned out have been damaged to varying degrees, except for some "jade pieces" in the coffin, which do not seem to be affected by the passage of time.
The "jade pieces" found in this archaeological cleanup, although their texture is smooth and emerald green, are slightly turbid inside, and they are very different from the color of the jade itself. Archaeologists have also boldly concluded that these so-called "jade pieces" in the coffin should not be real jade, but another substance. It was not until the results of the laboratory in the archaeological laboratory were released that the experts' ideas were verified, and it turned out that these "jade pieces" were actually glass containing "lead barium elements", and a "glass clothing" wrapped around the whole body was restored.
Speaking of this, there are certainly readers who will be quite familiar with this scene, yes, the clothes worn by the owner of the tomb when he was buried are the high-imitation version of the "golden jade clothes". The ancients believed that jade had a special anti-embalming function, if the jade was plugged with the nine tips of the human body, and made into jade to wrap the whole body, it could make the body immortal for ten thousand years.
The golden jade coat, also known as the jade box, was a necessary funerary item for the burial of high-ranking royal nobles in ancient times. In the archaeological community, the most famous golden jade clothes are not the golden jade clothes worn by Liu Sheng, the king of Zhongshan in the Mancheng Han Tomb, in addition to the Tomb of Xishan Han in Yongcheng City, Henan Province, and the tomb of Liu Hao in Linyi City, Shandong Province, have also unearthed golden jade clothes, which have almost become representative funerary objects for the tombs of princes of the Western Han Dynasty.
Archaeologists said that the glass "golden jade clothes" excavated from the Han tomb of the "Concubine Moshu" are actually a kind of persistent yearning for the identity of the owner. According to the burial system regulations of the Han Dynasty, the owner of the tomb as a female official was not eligible to enjoy the treatment of golden jade clothes, but this female official also wanted to live for thousands of years, so she came up with this compromise method, so that she could not violate the rules and satisfy her own wishes.
It is also worth explaining that in the Han Dynasty, glass products were not only low in cost, but also through molds, they could be mass-produced, so it was a good idea to make "golden jade clothes" with glass. Of course, archaeologists have not given up the study of glass "golden jade" because of the difference in texture, because there is also a high historical value in it.
Wen xiucai, editor-in-chief of Wenlan Hairun Studio, written by: Special history writer: Changshan Zhao Zi worm