In the winter of 1979, the Cultural Relics Bureau of Pingdingshan City, Henan Province, received a call from a waste recycling station, and the person in charge rushed to the scene and spent 9.9 to buy back a bronze, but what people did not expect was that this bronze that was "sold cheaply" was actually a national treasure level thing, and there was a huge historical secret behind it
"Deng Gongzha, should be Concubine, Concubine, its eternal treasure use."
After some investigation and inference, the experts of the Cultural Relics Bureau drew a shocking conclusion from this sentence: there was a country in history that had never been recorded in the historical record, and the experts launched a protracted investigation
What is the origin of this bronze? What kind of historical information does these words contain in him? What kind of historical mystery is involved in this? We have to start with the phone call to the Antiquities Bureau
An unexpected phone call leads to a huge puzzle
In that phone call, the staff of the Pingdingshan Cultural Relics Bureau in Henan Province received such an important message. According to the owner of the waste recycling station, he received a "big guy" weighing about 10 pounds from an old farmer in the countryside, which didn't look like an ordinary thing, so he called the cultural relics bureau to come and identify the value of this "big guy"
We all know that this Henan Province was a relatively backward province at that time, and there were few major archaeological discoveries, so when the staff of the Cultural Relics Bureau learned of this news, they immediately sent people to the scene
At that time, there were two people who went to the appraisal, both of whom can be said to have very rich archaeological experience, one is Sun Qingyuan, deputy research librarian of the Pingdingshan Museum, and the other is Hao Benzhi, the research institute of the Henan Provincial Institute of Cultural Relics and Archaeology
When they arrived at the scene, they only took a few glances to find that the so-called "big guy" in the mouth of the owner of this waste collection station was unbelievable, and this was a real bronze guise from the late Western Zhou Dynasty
They were also very happy to see the situation, which could be said to be a major discovery at the time, and finally under their popular science, they took the bronze guise from the boss's hand for less than ten yuan
Originally, the value of this bronze guise was already difficult to predict, but I did not expect that a bigger surprise was still to come, and Sun Qingyuan and others soon made a surprising discovery after bringing the bronze guise back to the research institute
They found that on the bottom wall inside this bronze grate was engraved a few lines of text, that is, the sentence we said above: "Deng Gongzha, ying Yi Bi, 媫簋, its eternal treasure use." ”
This sentence is not good, you must know that in the Western Zhou Dynasty, if the bronze is marked with words, it means that its owner is at least a prince and nobleman, then the value of this bronze guise has suddenly risen
So what exactly does this sentence in the bronze grate mean? According to the language and writing of the Western Zhou Dynasty that we know today, experts have also interpreted this sentence
This means that a person named Deng Gong made this bronze gui, gave it to a woman named Ying Yanbi, as a dowry gift, and also sent his blessings to her, hoping that she could live a long and happy life and use this gift of hers forever
It is reasonable to say that this should be a very common thing, this is not a gift from Deng Gong to his daughter or sister who is going to marry, why would it involve a dynasty that has never been recorded in history?
Through the fog of history, the ancient Ying Kingdom reappeared in the sky
It turned out that when experts made an in-depth interpretation of this sentence, they found one of the problems, that is, the three words of Ying Yanbi did not know how to interpret
According to the literal understanding, this woman named Yan Bi married a man with the surname Ying, which is not difficult to understand, but in ancient times, the married women all paid attention to the door to the household, according to the status of Deng Gong, the other party must at least be a prince
But the problem lies here, and the experts have gone through all the historical records of the Western Zhou Dynasty and found that there is no existence of any princely states with the surname of Ying
How can this be explained? Just when everyone was puzzled, some people put forward a shocking conjecture: in history, the Zhou Dynasty implemented the "Fanping Zhou" rule method, that is, to divide the land outside the capital of the Zhou Dynasty to their brothers and some heroes, so that they could each establish their own country, like the stars holding the moon and guarding the Gyeonggi region
According to relevant historical records, the number of princely states in the Jiangnan region alone reached more than twenty at that time, so were there any princely states with the surname that were "forgotten" by history?
The experts agreed that this possibility was very large, and then they began to investigate, they found the owner of the waste collection station to ask about the origin of the bronze gui, and learned from the boss that the old farmer came from a place called The Town of Huoyang
Experts quickly rushed over to the melon, and sure enough, many Objects from the Qin and Han Dynasties were found near a small hill bag there, although slightly broken, indicating that there may be Tombs of the Qin and Han Dynasties nearby
According to the old farmer who dug out the bronze grate, the bronze grate was accidentally dug up near here, not only him, but many villagers have dug out similar objects, and even sometimes heavy rains can wash out some small bronze objects
This made the experts very excited, does this mean that there is also an ancient tomb of Yingguo nearby? But the old farmer's subsequent words made the experts feel very sad, it turned out that there was a canal in the vicinity, and many bronzes were dug out in the process of digging the canal, but people at that time did not know these things, so many bronzes were broken and sold as scrap iron
This just found a clue that may be related to Ying Guo's tomb, and he was splashed with cold water on his head. This originally had few clues, and it has destroyed so much physical evidence in these years, and it has to be said that it is extremely regrettable
But the experts did not give up, sun Qingyuan and others after visiting and investigating, in some villagers' homes have a windfall. It turned out that some people had preserved the excavated bronzes, and these bronzes were invariably engraved with words about Yingguo
This relieved the experts, who were finally sure that there must be an ancient tomb in the vicinity of Yingguo, and could begin to carry out tentative excavations in the vicinity
According to this clue, historians also found some records about Ying Guo in the ancient book "Notes on the Water Classic". "The east of the water passes through the south of Yingcheng, so it should be the hometown, and the country of the Hou should be."
When historians find the location marked in the history books, they find that it is located near the place where the bronze gui was found called the town of Fuyang, and according to the local villagers, there is a river near them called the Ying River, and there used to be a bustling ancient city here
Unlike other ancient cities, this ancient city has five gates, in addition to our common east-west, north-south direction, but also built a city gate in the southeast direction - Wang trumen
It is Wang truman's statement that has attracted the attention of experts, we know that the earliest rise of the Chu state was in the Spring and Autumn Period, posing a great threat to the Zhou Dynasty at that time, and the ying state closest to the Chu state naturally undertook the heavy responsibility of resisting the invasion of the Chu state, which is the reason for the construction of Wang Truman
At this point, the physical evidence of human evidence and the records of historical materials have corresponded, which also shows that there was indeed a princely state with a surname in the location of The town of Yingyang, and this discovery also fills the gap in the history of the country