The excavation of the Mawangdui Han Tomb has also allowed the Hunan Provincial Museum to add a lot of cultural relics treasures.
Among them, there is also a cultural relic, which, like the T-shaped painting, was included in the "Catalogue of the First Batch of Cultural Relics Prohibited from Going Abroad (Border) Exhibition" by the State Administration of Cultural Heritage.
It is the Western Han Dynasty straight-tunic gauze tunic.
(Historical Uncle photographed at the museum)
As early as December 1971, Changsha city planned to build a hospital.
Migrant workers digging air raid shelters found that the original red grid map suddenly turned into another kind of sparse soil, and also brought out a gas, and the migrant workers then extended the matches into it and found that it was ignited.
The staff hurriedly reported it, and the archaeologists initially determined that this soil may be a burial chamber, and after three months of excavation, a huge coffin was found in the pit of Tomb No. 1, which was later confirmed to be the wife of Li Cang, the minister of Changsha, ---- Xinchai.
As the lid of the outer wooden rafter was lifted, the wooden coffin in the center of the wooden rafter was also presented, and a large number of boxes of funerary goods were placed around the wooden coffin, one of which was particularly surprising, that is, this Western Han Straight Plain Gauze Jacket.
(Bottom of the wooden rafter of the Woman of Xin Chai)
Why is a piece of clothing so famous?
The whole dress is made of plain yarn, which has neither lining nor color, and the lining is not made of ordinary cotton, but is woven from fine silk, with a square hole plain weave interwoven with single warp and single weft silk.
The most important thing is that the weight of this dress is only 49 grams, if you remove the cuffs or neckline, the weight of the shirt is only about 25 grams, which can be described as thin as a cicada wing" and "as light as smoke".
Therefore, put on this soft, flowing texture of the gown, walk slowly, fluttering, showing the femininity of women.
Some scholars speculate that this dress may be the personal underwear of Mrs. Xin Chai's life when worn so that the carcass is looming; some scholars believe that this dress is a decorative garment, which sets off the beauty and honor of the brocade.
(Modern man speculates)
Why can a piece of clothing be so thin and light?
The main thing is that the plain gauze shirt is a kind of square-hole plain weave fabric interwoven by single warp single weft silk, the warp density is generally 58 to 64 per centimeter, the weft density is 40 to 50 yarns per centimeter, and the void permeability is about 75%, and the yarn per square meter weighs only 15.4 grams.
The four groups of warp silk used in the whole plain coat are two sets of ground warp, a set of bottom warp and a set of thicker velvet rings, which are threaded into a ring of velvet during weaving, and then woven into the velvet weft, and then pumped out after weaving to make the woven velvet ring warp to form a ring.
Such a complex structure of clothing also reflects the high development of the Han Dynasty weaving and spinning silk technology.
In addition, this kind of silk is somewhat different, and the silk responsible for spitting silk is also exquisite.
At that time, the Western Han Dynasty adopted the "three swoops and three rises" of the one-dimensional three-sleep silkworm.
The so-called "three prostrations and three rises" are silkworms that have undergone three dormancy and molting, and the silk that has been spit out has become more slender and the cocoons have become smaller, so this is why this dress is so slender and light.
It is worth mentioning that this kind of clothing is not easy to copy.
The Hunan Provincial Museum once tried to restore, but the restored clothes weighed more than 80 grams, and after 13 years of painstaking research, the researchers began to study a special food to feed the silkworms, control the size of the silkworms, and finally use the silk spit out of the small and slim silkworms to reproduce this plain gauze jacket.
What is on display in the museum is not the real thing
Today, the plain gauze shirt displayed by the Hunan Provincial Museum is not the real thing, but a restoration that was successfully imitated later.
The main thing is that the original has experienced more than two thousand years of history, and now there have been some changes in the structure, becoming a fragile object.
In addition, this plain gauze shirt was stolen once a few years after it was unearthed, but fortunately the cultural relics have been recovered, but some of them have been damaged, so they have to be repaired.
As the world's earliest, most complete, most refined production process, the most light and thin clothing, the Western Han Dynasty straight-heeled plain gauze shirt has an extremely important position in the history of ancient silk weaving, clothing and scientific and technological development in the mainland.
After more than 2,000 years, the story of this dress still continues, traveling through thousands of years, a bizarre life.