The mining of ancient tombs has gradually received attention since the founding of New China.
Ancient tombs often contain thousands of buried stories and details. The cultural relics excavated from the ancient tomb also show the identity and status of the owner of the tomb.
After these cultural relics are mined, they carry a hundred years or even a thousand years of wind and frost, even if they are only quietly placed there, it seems to tell a story through thousands of years.
For example, in May 1968, Liu Sheng's golden jade robes were unearthed in the tomb of King Jing of Zhongshan in Mancheng County, Hebei Province, and the complexity of the craftsmanship and the integrity of preservation shocked the world.
The excavation of this golden jade coat not only provides an important clue for the study of the funerary system of the Han Dynasty, but also shows the development of casting, jade making and fine arts and crafts at that time.
Or the "Tang Beast Head Agate Cup" excavated in 1970 in Hejia Village, Xi'an City, Shaanxi Province. It is the only beautiful jade carving of the Tang Dynasty that has been found so far, and it is also the most exquisite one of the Tang Dynasty jade artifacts that have been discovered.
The shape of this agate cup is very common in Central Asia, West Asia, especially Sassanid Persia (present-day Iran), which also confirms the social atmosphere of the Tang Dynasty nobles who advocated Hu Feng at that time. It also further demonstrates the "Sheng Tang" Kaiyuan and tolerance.
Mining of "alien" skulls
When it comes to this agate cup out of the land of Xi'an, people often joke that there are "tomb view rooms" everywhere. Whether it's building a house or digging a subway, if you're not careful, you may dig up a new group of ancient tombs. In 2001, when the Qujiang Campus of Xi'an University of Technology was being built, an ancient tomb group was found, and in this ancient tomb group, an "alien" skull was unearthed.
The reason why it is called an "alien" skull is mainly because this skull is not the same as the skull unearthed in normal times, and it was found after experts carefully identified it after pulling out the dirt.
The so-called "alien" skull is because the upper part of the skull is scattered with a long string of ornaments, coupled with thousands of years of silence, so when the day is seen again, this "shape" makes people feel like "aliens".
In fact, this skull is not for foreign visitors. The owner of this tomb is Li Qian, the character Shuxian. Li Kuang was the second eldest in the family, and his father Li Jin, the Prince of Shu, named him Li Qian, "倕" was the name of a skillful craftsman in ancient times, and it is said that this skillful craftsman was good at making bows and arrows, which also pinned on the father's small expectations for his daughter, hoping that her daughter would become a skillful person in the future.
However, Li Wei was not so lucky, and died in the twenty-fourth year of the new century (736 AD), at the age of 25.
According to a sentence in his epitaph, "The son lies in swaddling", it is speculated that Li Tong had just given birth to a baby, which may have died in dystocia.
Although Li Qian was not a princess, she was a royal daughter. Zong's daughter, that is, the daughter of the monarch Tongzong, Li Wei is the fifth generation descendant of Li Yuan, the founding emperor of the Tang Dynasty, so her status is also very noble.
Moreover, her residence was located in Chang'an Shengyefang, east of the Imperial City, near the Xingqing Palace, where Tang Xuanzong handled government affairs, and in ancient times, where the hierarchy was quite strict, around the Imperial City, there were mostly exclusive noble residences.
This unearthed crown ornament further confirms the dignity of its identity, but also shows the tang dynasty's atmospheric and rich fashion fashion, when this crown was unearthed, although it has been scattered, but still can not hide its exquisite production process.
Expert restoration, the craftsmanship is amazing
In the face of such a crown, after nine years, in February 2010, Chinese and German experts restored the princess's crown using excavated ornaments.
After the restoration, almost all the materials that could be used in the Tang Dynasty were used. Amber pearls and shell agate are basic, and rubies, turquoise and even emerald bird feathers are decorated under gold jewelry for luxury.
The most surprising thing, though, is the "gold bead" decoration on top of it. The cultural relics excavated from Li Qian's tomb are decorated with a large number of gold beads, and this production process makes people directly call out whether there was already "high technology" in ancient times.
"Gold bead" decoration is to be decorated with very small gold bead particles around the base of each piece of ornament that makes up the headdress, especially in the larger or more central position of some gold jewelry, the main pattern of the bottom surface will be covered with gold beads to enrich the piece.
Zhang Meng, a doctoral student at Tsinghua University, has done in-depth research on the art of jinzhu. According to the data, Mr. Yang Junchang of the Shaanxi Provincial Institute of Cultural Relics Protection and others have made microscopic observations of the gold beads decorated with the crown of Li Qian's tomb.
According to the measurement results, the diameter of the gold bead ornaments is only 300 to 350 microns, and the smaller ones are between 110 and 280 microns. The diameter of an adult's hair is 70 microns, which shows the small size of the gold beads.
What is even more surprising is that the size of these small gold beads is still relatively uniform. Its sheer number is also staggering — just a petal-style ornament with more than 5,000 gold beads, not to mention an entire crown.
Leaving aside for the moment how these tiny round and slippery "golden beads" were made at that time, just by "welding" them evenly one by one, and having to be well preserved after thousands of years of wind and frost, it is enough to lament the wisdom and exquisite production skills of the ancients, making people not only wonder whether there was already high technology in ancient times.
At the same time, researchers from the School of Information Science and Technology of Beijing Normal University successfully restored the princess's head using modern computer technology.
After a CT scan of the skull, they reconstructed the princess's three-dimensional skull through software and pushed out the skull surface further.
Li Qian's appearance and this luxurious headdress have been vividly presented to people after a thousand years.
summary
Although Li Qian's tomb had already been eroded by water when it was excavated, and many of the funerary items were scattered, it was gratifying that the tomb was not patronized by stolen tomb thieves, so that such exquisite ornaments could be displayed in front of the world through thousands of years.
In addition to this crown, the pendants on Li Qian's body are also well preserved, and after restoration, people have to lament the tang dynasty's thousand-year-old aesthetic and refined details.
Today, this unearthed Li Wei head crown ornament is displayed in the museum, and next to it there is a 3D three-dimensional restoration map made by the museum, restoring the process from excavation to restoration. Many visitors can also understand its exquisite beauty more intuitively through this.
Behind these jewelry, we also see the inheritance of traditional culture and aesthetics, and also provide new ideas and excellent materials for the road of continuing to carry forward traditional skills. After visiting, many visitors expressed their hope to use modern technology to "reproduce" the shape of these accessories.
From these excavated cultural relics, we have glimpsed a corner of history, although it is impossible to completely restore the real historical situation at that time, but this cultural relics also provides a bridge for dialogue with the past.