In the spring of 2004, at the site of a highway construction in Guyuan City, Ningxia, an ancient tomb of the Sui Dynasty was discovered. In the small burial chamber, two bones of a man and a woman were buried "hand in hand" without a coffin!
The male tomb master wears a gold crown, a gold belt around his waist, and a Roman gold coin in his hand! His identity is questionable...
01, the owner of the tomb wearing a golden crown
In order to cooperate with the construction of the Yinchuan-Wuhan expressway, the Ningxia Cultural Relics Unit explored the construction area of the Guyuan section in advance, and found dozens of Han tombs and two Sui Dynasty tombs in the Jiulongshan area.
Obviously, the area around Jiulong Mountain was once a burial area for the ancient Guyuan people to be buried after their deaths...
When the Sui Dynasty tomb numbered M33 was cleaned up, no one expected to encounter such a "strange" scene.
The tomb is buried at a depth of 0.6 meters above the surface and is a single-chamber earthen cave tomb. The length of the tomb passage, the passage and the burial chamber is a total of 8.2 meters.
On this day, the location of the burial chamber had been cleared, but the traces of human skulls suddenly appeared in the dirt! This discovery surprised the archaeologists at the scene, after all, the coffin had not yet been seen, how did the human skeleton appear first?
After slowly sweeping away the floating soil on the skull, the next scene you see is even more amazing!
Only to see that above this skull, there was actually a dangling "golden crown"! Yes, the team members looked at it carefully again, and it was indeed a "golden crown"!
The pattern on the golden crown is very rare, in the middle is a nearly circular moon, and within the moon is a circular pattern; as the center, extending to the left and right are several groups of bird-shaped patterns, and the birds' flight feathers are exquisitely made; the body of the golden crown is also chiseled with beaded ornaments.
A small tomb, there is actually a tomb owner wearing a golden crown? This discovery is exhilarating! Because the meaning of the "Golden Crown" is very special, generally only the "King" level figures can wear it!
02, full of goldware
Could it be that the tomb of a Sui Dynasty "king" was found in Jiulong Mountain, Guyuan? The idea is a bit of a surprise...
Just when people were lamenting the delicacy of the golden crown, the jaw of this skull had a new discovery!
This time, the archaeologists found that the golden crown did not exist alone, but also connected to another piece of gold jewelry, the gold jaw holder. This "gold jaw holder" surrounds the owner's face and holds his jaw.
Why did the owner of the tomb use a jaw holder? It turns out that after a person dies, after a period of time, the jaw will automatically fall off, which will make the corpse bone face vicious. With the jaw support to play a fixed role, you can keep the face normal for a long time, and it is also considered to give the deceased the last honor...
In this way, the owner of the tomb was extremely particular about his burial! This also confirms once again that this person's identity is not ordinary.
Continuing to clean up the remains, when it reached the waist of the owner of the tomb, "gold" appeared again. This time, it's a "gold belt"! Not far from the gold belt, the archaeologists also found a Roman gold coin.
Let's restore the state of the tomb owner when he was buried:
Obviously, when buried, the owner of the tomb did not use the coffin, but directly wore a gold crown and a gold jaw holder, a gold belt around the waist, and a Roman gold coin in his hand, lying directly on the coffin bed...
This gold-filled tomb owner, in addition to these, only two clay pots were found as burial objects in the tomb? The situation seems a little odd.
However, the archaeologists are excited. Because this exquisite golden crown is the first discovery in the Guyuan area so far, it is very precious, and its research value is also very large...
03, a thousand years ago "holding hands"
However, the surprise did not stop there. With the cleaning of this human skeleton, right next to him, there was actually a second human skeleton!
And this time, another scene that stunned everyone on the scene appeared!
The second human skeleton and the first body lie side by side, and the palms of the two human skeletons actually show a state of "finger bones interlocking"!
Could it be that when these two people were buried, they were ten fingers intertwined? Undoubtedly, this "ambiguous" action has given everyone unlimited imagination...
Moreover, according to the identification of human bones by human physique experts, the first human bone wearing a golden crown was a male, aged 35-40 years; the second human bone was a female, aged 25-35 years.
Undoubtedly, this is a husband and wife burial tomb, from the Sui Dynasty more than 1,400 years ago.
"Hand in hand across a thousand years", "A thousand years of love legend"... Many words of praise came to mind. People seem to believe that there really is an ancient miracle of love here.
However, archaeologists poured a basin of cold water: they believe that the tomb may have been in the process of stratigraphic extrusion, etc., resulting in the dislocation of the two bones, resulting in the coincidence of "ten fingers interlocking".
Alas, it's really a bad sight! It is better to let everyone be well moved...
Finally, let's talk about the identities of two ancient couples. In fact, the ornamentation on the gold crown and the ancient Roman gold coins have already explained some problems. When the human bone was identified, the situation was confirmed even more!
This couple is not a Central Plains person. They were Sogdians from Central Asia.
More than a thousand years ago, Guyuan was already an important town on the Silk Road. Many Central Asians came here and even settled down for generations.
They live a rich life and have fully integrated into the culture here, but they still have the nostalgia for their hometown in their bones. As a result, there was a custom of "no coffin and no rafters" but wearing a golden crown to bury in the tomb...
Unfortunately, this tomb does not have an epitaph and other things that can fully confirm the surname of the owner of the tomb, and they have become a "nameless couple".
After a thousand years, their bodies are gone, but they have returned to their hometowns, leaving only the golden crown shining, still telling the once prosperous Guyuan time...