In December 1974, a local wood factory was under construction in Changsha, Hunan Province, and inadvertently excavated a large tomb with a beautiful rare treasure inside.
Two years ago, the discovery of the Mawangdui Han Tomb in Changsha shocked the world, and this also greatly improved the local people's awareness of cultural relics protection, so when the workers found the ancient tomb, they did not panic in the slightest, they reported the situation to the local cultural relics department at the first time.
Experts also rushed to the scene immediately after hearing the news, after preliminary investigation found that this is a high-ranking aristocratic tomb in the Western Han Dynasty, unfortunately, although this tomb was built on the top of the hill and cleverly camouflaged, it still did not escape the clutches of tomb robbers, experts even found a Tang Dynasty porcelain bowl in the tomb, which should be the Tang Dynasty gold lieutenant left behind to eat guys.
The tomb had been stolen by the experts who were extremely disappointed, and when they saw the large hole at the end of the coffin, their mood sank to the bottom, but strangely, when they opened the coffin, they found that there were many rare treasures inside. It turned out that after the grave robber had punched a hole in one end of the coffin, for some reason, he had just stolen the treasure that he could touch with his hand, so the other end of the coffin was still full of treasures.
The unexpected discovery delighted the experts, who, after cleaning, found more than 40 pieces of gold, silver, jade and glass artifacts in the coffin, including a white jade seal and two agate seals. As a symbol of the identity of the tomb owner, the significance of the seal is self-evident, after interpreting the seal on the seal as "Cao Xun" and "concubine Cao Xun", it is obvious that the owner of the tomb is a woman, and after examination, she is likely to be the wife of Liu Fa, the king of Changsha.
In addition to the seal, there is one treasure that is particularly eye-catching among the excavated cultural relics, which is the beautiful blue glass ring. This blue glass ring has a diameter of 8.1 cm, is circular, translucent, bright in color, with black dark lines in blue, and has a very high appearance. Among the various colored glass vessels unearthed in the mainland, glass beads and glass bi are not too rare, but this blue glass ring is a unique treasure, which should be a bracelet of the tomb owner, which is an extremely rare glass treasure.
So the question is, why did this tomb man use the glass ring as a funerary object?
Glass is a very precious material in ancient mainland China, the earliest is the ancients from the firing of bronze produced by-products of the production of, unlike the Western soda-lime glass, glass is a kind of lead barium glass.
Through the analysis of the number of glass ware excavated from the two Han Dynasties, it is found that Hunan is a large province excavated from the mainland, especially Changsha. So why did the tombs in Changsha unearth fewer jade artifacts and more glazed vessels? This is actually determined by the local geographical characteristics and mineral conditions.
First of all, Hunan does not produce jade, so it is not realistic to use a large number of jade as funerary products. Secondly, Changsha is rich in lead, which is recorded in the "Records of History": "Changsha, out of the company, chalk", of which the company is lead. This also caused the local princes and nobles to use some glass products instead of jade as funerary items. It is precisely because of this tradition that the glass making process here in ancient times was more exquisite, and this blue glass ring is one of the masterpieces.
The discovery of Cao Xun's tomb is of great significance, it plays an important role in the historical culture and burial system of Changsha in the Western Han Dynasty, and the blue glass ring unearthed as the value of the glass ware is also of great value, and it is a rare and rare treasure.