The "Gansu Provincial Museum" is a comprehensive museum with a collection of about 350,000 cultural relics. When visiting this museum, we will find a "unique" dove-shaped gold ornament, but what kind of secrets does this thin gold ornament hide, and why does it solve the mystery of the totem of the Qin Kingdom?
In the early 1990s, cultural relics experts in Gansu Province received orders from their superiors to prepare to visit Dabaozi Mountain. In the course of the expedition, experts unexpectedly discovered the tomb. But before the experts could rejoice, they let out a series of sighs, starting from the north of the tomb and spreading to the center of the tomb, where a robbery hole appeared every 5-7 meters.
The accumulation of robbery holes on the tomb means that the tomb has been patronized by tomb robbers. After some deliberations, the experts decided to carry out a rescue excavation of the tomb. When the experts entered the tomb in discouragement, an unexpected thing happened, although the large funerary items were stolen, but some small cultural relics were preserved intact, which is really a blessing in misfortune.
When experts excavated cultural relics, a piece of gold ornament placed on the coffin successfully attracted the attention of everyone, it was 14.5 cm high and 9 cm wide, with a hook pecking at the end of the piece, a ring eye, a flexion claw, the front was polished very carefully, but the back was not specially treated.
What is the special meaning of this gold ornament, which is placed on the lid of the coffin?
Through the rescue of cultural relics, after professional analysis, experts determined that the tomb was buried in the tomb of the first two monarchs of the founding of the Qin State, that is, Qin Zhong, Zhuang Gong or Xiang Gong. Because of this, the burial items in the mausoleum will be very rich, otherwise the tomb robbers will come one after another, and there will be small burial items left in the mausoleum.
According to the records of "Qinghua Jian", the Qin people were a clan living in the East and belonged to the Dongyi Group.winning the surname. In ancient times on the continent, each tribe would have a special marker - totem. For example, the Fuxi clan uses "snake" as a totem; the Yellow Emperor tribe uses "bear" as a totem; and the Yandi tribe uses "cow" as a totem.
As we all know, the ancestor of the Qin people was Shao Hao. In the Shaohao era, the Dongyi people worshiped birds very much. After Shao Hao became the head of the clan, he established a system of making "bird" news officials. For example, when the phoenix bird knows the sky, Shao Hao seals it as the calendar, the swallow comes at the spring equinox, the autumn equinox goes, and the Shao Hao seals it as a division. Because of this, the Dongyi people will worship birds and use "birds" as a totem.
In "The Beauty Consciousness and Totem Worship of the Ancestors from ancient texts", we can learn: "Shao Hao, the king of the hundred birds, is a bird with a name..." Because of this, experts named this gold ornament "bird-shaped gold ornament".
Qin Jun placed the "Qin Dove Bird Shaped Gold Ornament" on the coffin for two main purposes, one of which was to express the worship of the clan god. Second, he hoped that under the protection of the totem, he would be able to ascend to heaven early and obtain eternal life.
The "Qin Dove Bird Shaped Gold Ornament" is not a simple ornament, it is even a "gold" key that solves the mystery of the totem of the Qin Kingdom. Nowadays, this cultural relic is collected in the Gansu Provincial Museum, if you are interested, you can take advantage of the holiday to take a look, feel its unique charm up close, and understand the history and culture behind it.