He is the son of Liu Xiu and Yin Lihua, and the excavated cultural relics from the tomb have refreshed the history of world glasses

In 1980, workers at a brick and tile factory in Hanjiang County were taking soil from Shuangshan as usual, and the hoe suddenly dug up a hard object and forced his hand to bounce away. He carefully pulled the dirt away, but was startled by the sight in front of him. It turned out that the bottom was densely piled with green bricks. Is there an ancient tomb underneath this?

Experts soon arrived at the scene and soon after a rescue excavation of the tomb was carried out. The sealed mound of the tomb is about 60 meters in diameter and 13 meters high. The burial chamber is located in the center and is all made of brick. The entire burial chamber is nearly square in plan, 8.8 meters long from north to south and 9.6 meters wide from east to west. The sealed door wall is 1.4 meters thick, and the bottom of the tomb is paved with 4 layers of green bricks, which is 0.52 meters thick.

There are 4 compartments in the middle of the tomb, and the middle two are coffin chambers. The top collapsed early, and the coffin near the west side contained a small number of skull and limb fragments.

Due to the serious theft, there is little information about the artifacts unearthed in the tombs. Only one goose foot lamp has the inscription "Built in the 28th year of Jianwu..."

Jianwu was the first era name of Liu Xiu, the Guangwu Emperor of the Eastern Han Dynasty, only in the 31st year. From this, experts judge that this is an early eastern Han dynasty tomb. Despite the serious theft, the artifacts unearthed in the tomb show that the identity of the owner of the tomb is extraordinary, but who is it?

One of them is a "crystal gold ring" with a diameter of 1.3 cm and a total weight of 2.3 grams. In the middle is a convex lens made of crystal of extreme purity, wrapped in a gold ring engraved with a relief pattern, the shape is very exquisite, you can use the eye clip to use, can enlarge the object 4 to 5 times. The excavation of this cultural relic directly rewrote the history of glasses in the world.

In human history, the earliest written record of glasses is in 1268, Rogier. Bacon recorded lenses for optical purposes. It was not until 1352 that the earliest spectacle portraits appeared. It was not until the Ming Dynasty that there were records of glasses in China, which were introduced to China by Western missionaries.

But this tomb is nearly 2,000 years old, more than 1,200 years before the world's earliest record. However, China's glasses technology should be earlier, as early as the Spring and Autumn Warring States, Mozi and Mojia proposed the principle of small hole imaging, indicating that there was already a certain degree of research on optics at that time. Curiously, why did China's pre-Ming dynasty history not have a single word about "glasses"? Could it be because it was later lost? Our earliest record is still an imported product, which has to be lamented...

If it were not for archaeology, I believe that there would be many "Chinese inventions" that would have been overwhelmed by history because there is no written record, so that our descendants will not be able to know at all. Physical objects are the best evidence, and we should be proud of that.

There is also a particularly eye-catching cultural relic in the tomb, which is now in the Collection of Nanjing Museum, which is the treasure of the town hall and a national treasure.

It is a wrong silver copper bull lamp, pass height 46 cm, length 36.4 cm. The lamp body is composed of three parts: lamp holder, lamp and smoke pipe. The lamp holder is a fat scalper with its mouth bowed and its head ready to fight. The copper bull's whole body was decorated with a stream of clouds with wrong silver. At the top of the lamp there is a flue connected to the head of the cow, and the hollow body of the cow can hold water.

When the lamp is lit, the smoke oil can enter the body of the copper bull through the flue and dissolve in water, which plays an environmental role and greatly reduces indoor pollution. The exquisite degree even far exceeds the Changxin Palace lamp unearthed in the tomb of Dou Xuan, the wife of Liu Sheng, the King of Jing of Zhongshan during the Western Han Dynasty. It is clearly a royal artifact that can never be possessed by a person of ordinary status. Could it be that the tomb is buried by a certain prince of the Eastern Han Dynasty? What is the relationship between him and Liu Xiu?

According to the literature, during the Jianwu period in the early Eastern Han Dynasty, Liu Xiu had made liu Jing, the ninth son born to him and Yin Lihua, the king of Shanyang. Later, because he wanted to oppose Emperor Ming, Emperor Ming moved him here because he was a half-brother and remembered brotherhood, and he was crowned the King of Guangling. However, Liu Jing died unrepentant, and actually cursed Emperor Ming with witchcraft, and was later accused of suicide. At this point, the state of Guangling was removed and demoted to Guangling County, and Liu Jing became the last King of Guangling in the Han Dynasty. Could it be that the owner of the tomb is Liu Jing?

Judging from the cultural relics unearthed in the tomb, the possibility of Liu Jing is very large. However, the inscriptions of the existing excavated artifacts do not determine the identity of the owner of the tomb. Experts can only speculate and dare not make conclusions. It was not until a year later, when something happened, that the identity of the owner of the tomb was finally determined.

In February 1981, because of the soil to build the road, the female worker Tao Xiuhua accidentally dug up a golden shining thing in the pile of soil next to the excavation of the tomb that year. She slipped it in her pocket and took it to wash it after finishing work, only to find that it was a gold seal with the shape of a turtle on the back of the seal. At that time, people already had a certain awareness of cultural relics, so she handed over the seal to the cultural relics department.

After identification, the seal is cast in pure gold, the side of the seal is 2.3 cm long, the thickness is 0.9 cm, and the weight is 122.8 grams. The seal inscription "Guangling Wang Seal" is engraved on the printing surface. At this point, the mystery of the identity of the tomb owner was finally revealed, and it was determined that Liu Jing, the king of Guangling in the Eastern Han Dynasty, and the princess were buried together. However, experts are very confused, how can the golden seal appear in this position?

It turned out that this pile of soil was piled up by tomb robbers in the past, and most of it was dirt and bricks. Maybe the size of the gold seal is too small, and in the crazy excavation of the tomb robbers, it has accidentally become a fish that slipped through the net...

Fortunately, this omission not only solved the mystery of the identity of the owner of the tomb, but also solved another problem that had been controversial for more than 200 years but had never been solved.

The Book of later Han Dynasty And Dongyi Biography records: "In the second year of the Jianwu Dynasty, the Uighur Kingdom paid tribute to the Pilgrimage, and the Guangwu Emperor gave the seal silk..." During the Eastern Han Dynasty, Japan was still in the late stage of primitive society. If a tribe can be recognized by the powerful Han Dynasty, it can order or even crusade against other tribes and dominate one side.

In 1784, a Japanese farmer picked up a golden seal of snake buttons from the "King of Han Weinu", which many people suspected was not given by the Han Dynasty, but was a forgery of the Edo period. However, the golden seal and the Guangling Royal Seal unearthed this time are the same in size, weight, pattern, carving method and font, and the difference is only one year before and after, and some scholars even suspect that the two seals are from the same craftsman.

Therefore, the discovery of the "Seal of the King of Guangling" is not only the earliest empirical evidence of sino-Japanese exchanges, but also a key to unlocking the mystery of the golden seal of the "King of han Weinu".