Shaanxi dug out 11 pounds of Tang Dynasty gold leaf, and after half a year, it was said that it was 3 pounds less, and the truth was stunned after 3 days
China has a long history, and the only thing that can witness this history is the rich cultural relics buried under the ground, and in the 1970s, the excavation of a number of objects once caused a sensation in society.
On the afternoon of October 5, 1970, a shelter in Hejia Village, a southern suburb of Xi'an City, was in full swing, and when migrant workers began to lay the foundation as usual, they dug up a position 0.8 from the surface, but suddenly revealed a gray ceramic. "Out of baby!" It was a heavy clay urn, and everyone gathered around it, but when they opened it, they found that it was gold that radiated a seductive light.
Soon the person in charge of the construction site informed the Revolutionary Committee of the time of this situation, and finally the news reached the Shaanxi Provincial Museum, and the museum immediately organized a team of archaeologists such as Han Wei, Luo Zhongru, Hang Dezhou, and Wang Yuqing to clean up and excavate. During the long excavation, a total of more than 1,000 pieces of Tang Dynasty gold and silver objects were unearthed, buried in two large pottery urns and a silver jar, including gold pots and gold bowls. Many of them are orphaned products and have very high artistic value.
It is worth mentioning that people also found four pieces of red gold leaf in the clay pot, the so-called gold leaf, that is, a thin sheet made of gold hammer, gold has a very good ductility, and now one or two (31. 25 grams) pure gold can be hammered into 10,000ths of a millimeter thick, with an area of 16. 2 square meters of gold leaf. In the past, gold leaf also needed a very high level of production to be able to complete, so the value and research significance of these four pieces of red gold leaf can be imagined.
At first, when the gold leaf was taken out, it was soaked in the underground water, and when it was wiped clean and measured with precision instruments, the weight of the gold leaf was 11 pounds, but the next thing was unexpected by many people. In January 1971, when Mr. Han Wei of the archaeologist group was compiling the report on gold and silverware, because it was to be represented by the international unit "grams", Han Wei also weighed it once, but he was surprised to find that the quality of gold leaf was reduced by 2.2 pounds compared with three months ago, and only 4388 grams were left!
After Han Wei fed back the information, people couldn't figure out what to do, why did the gold leaf suddenly decrease? On April 13, the museum's custodian registered the gold leaf as a relic, weighing it, and the result was that the figure was reduced again to 4148 grams. One time it was 240 grams less, 3 pounds less than the first time. So the museum immediately wondered if anyone had stolen the gold leaf? To know that the 3 pounds of gold in the 70s, the value has been equivalent to the cost of 8,000 people's monthly rations, if it is really gold theft, this is a major crime, so the superior set up an investigation team to investigate this case.
Considering that the gold leaf is only circulating among internal personnel, so the investigation team first made Han Weili, who had the most contact with the gold leaf, as the number one criminal suspect, for Han Wei, he also had a bitterness to say, he was innocent, and the gold leaf was not moved under his eyelids, how could the quality be reduced?
In the process of investigation, someone finally thought of the key place, and it turned out that a museum staff member thought that the gold leaf had water seepage during the exhibition, could it be that the gold leaf weighing had not completely penetrated the water before? In order to solve this doubt, the investigation team specially invited several experts from the Department of Chemistry and the Department of Physics from Northwestern University to conduct experiments.
They soaked the gold leaf in water for 3 days and then salvaged it out, the researchers wiped the surface of the gold leaf clean, and then weighed it, the result was stunned, the gold leaf came out no more and no less than 11 pounds! In this way, the truth has finally come out to the world, because this kind of gold leaf has never been unearthed before, and everyone did not expect that it would have such a high water absorption. Han Wei was also relieved and restored his reputation.