In 1973, the Shengli Distillery in Hetou Mountain, Wuzhou City, Guangxi Province, excavated two ancient tombs in the process of reconstruction, and after being cleaned up by archaeologists, more than 300 funerary artifacts were found, including a bronze artifact from the M2 tomb, which attracted the attention of archaeologists.
Eastern Han Dynasty Feather Copper Lamp (imitation) The following picture is the original national first-class cultural relics Collected by Wuzhou Museum
Pedestal - Mysterious Warrior
This is a bronze lamp, consisting of a lamp holder, a lamp post, a lamp plate, a person sitting on the lamp holder, a pillar on the head, a top lamp plate on the pillar, the height of the whole lamp is 30.5 cm, the bottom diameter is 12.8 cm, the lamp plate caliber is 8.9 cm, the handle is 8.5 cm, the three parts of the copper lamp can be disassembled, combined, easy to clean and maintain, and there are exquisite ornaments engraved on the lamp holder.
These ornaments seem to depict a magnificent mythological scene: at the very bottom are three mythical beast mounts, slender and elegant, with long claws, long tails and small wings, and six humanoid warriors in the upper part, sitting on top of the sacred beast. Carefully distinguished, the three beast bodies and their superior heads seem to be connected together, forming the image of a human head beast body, and the other three slightly smaller people ride across their bodies, is there any special meaning to this strange image of the human head, the beast body, the tiger stripe, and the wings? (Figure 2 where the yellow line is outlined)
Human head, tiger body, wings
This image can be found in the Classic of Mountains and Seas and the Classic of The Western Mountains: "Emperor's Pingpu, Sháo Sizhi, with its horse-like body and human face, tiger and gourd (xì) wings, patrolling the four seas." "Yingzhao, the god who manages the Heavenly Emperor's Garden, travels around the world to preach the will of the Heavenly Emperor.
Although the image of the god and man inscribed on the lamp holder is still somewhat vague, it is difficult to determine its mythological prototype, but the image of the middle section of the copper lamp clearly shows that it is the mythical feather man.
What is a feather man?
Yuren, also known as Yumin, has been passed down from generation to generation in the ancient legends of the Chinese ancestors, and is written in the "Classic of Mountains and Seas" of the Warring States, which records that in the South China Sea, the Yu Republic of China "has a long (often) head and a feather", and since then the image of The Yu people has begun to appear frequently in various cultural relics from the Warring States to the Qin and Han Dynasties. The "Classic of Mountains and Seas" records more than 400 kinds of gods, men and beasts, why did the ancestors have a special fondness for Yu's affection?
The worship of the Feather People can be traced back to the worship of birds by humans, and many antiquities of bird worship have been found in Liangzhu, Yin Ruins and Sanxingdui. In Lingnan, far from the Central Plains, there was also a bird worship in ancient times, and the rice god "Ya Wang" worshipped by the Zhuang ancestor Luo Yue people was a goddess with a bird head, and even Luo Yue's "Luo" was examined as a different writing of "Luo", and "Luo" was a kind of flying bird.
Later, the simple bird worship gradually formed the image of the unity of man and bird in the evolution, and in the Spring and Autumn Period and the Warring States Period, the feather people were given a magical skill - immortality. Qu Yuan said in "Chu Ci Yuanyou": "Still Yu people in Danqiu Xi, leaving the old hometown of immortality." It is this kind of legend that maps in literature.
During the Qin and Han dynasties, rulers pursued immortality, so the wind of cultivating immortals began to prevail, and people tried to become feather people through cultivation, and then soared into immortals. Archaeologists initially speculated that this feathered bronze lamp may be that the relatives of the tomb owner wanted to pray for the tomb owner's eternal life, so they cast it as a special burial tool.
However, after further investigation of the brass lamp, they overturned this view.
Li Naixian, former director of the Wuzhou Municipal Museum, was a member of the Wuzhou Archaeological Team at the time
Above (lamp plate) when we unearthed a lot of oil, a lot of black, this is obviously a practical product ah, at that time we considered whether to light oil or insert candles.
Wuzhou, what does it have to do with Yuren?
Since there are traces of use, it is not a ming instrument, linked to the Han Dynasty", "death is like life", thick burial customs, it can be inferred that this copper lamp is a very favorite thing of the tomb owner during his lifetime. Therefore, after his death, relatives put the lamp next to the master, hoping that the master could still use it after the feathering soared.
So, why is the tomb owner in Wuzhou so fascinated by the legend of the Yuren?
It is recorded in the Lü Shi Chunqiu Shen Xing Theory of Seeking People: "The south reaches the kingdom of Jiaotong, Sun Pu, and Xu Qi (man) ... ... The place where the feathered people and the naked people are, the land of the immortal. This shows that in the legend of the late Warring States period, the Kingdom of Yuren was in the south China Sea. Jiaotong, in ancient times, refers to the vast area of Guangxi, Guangdong and northern Vietnam, the Western Han Dynasty YuanFeng five years (106 BC) Emperor Wu of the Han Dynasty set up the Jiaotong Thorn History Department, under the jurisdiction of seven counties and fifty-six counties, is one of the thirteen thorn history departments in the country, Wuzhou's predecessor Guangxin County, is the site of the Jiaotong Thorn History.
Judging from other bronzes and pottery excavated from the same tomb, the owner of the Yuren bronze lamp is prominent and should be an official of the Department of Cross-Toed Thorn History in the middle and late Eastern Han Dynasty. Since Jiaotoe is the old land and the land of the immortals in the legendary Yuren Kingdom, this official is obsessed with the legend of the Yuren and longs for eternal life here.
Yuren: The worship image of ou luo's ancestors
The ancestors who lived in Lingnan before the Han Dynasty, known as Xi'ou and Luoyue, they integrated the worship of birds and the pursuit of immortality by the Central Plains people, completely accepted the legend and meaning of the Yu people, and symbolized the power of the copper drum in the Qin and Han dynasties unearthed throughout Guangxi, and the image of the Yu people appeared frequently, and the Yu people became an important symbol in the Ou Luo culture.
Xi'ou is an ancient people that frequently appears in ancient books, generally called "OuLuo" alongside "Luo Yue", which is used to refer to the ancestors who lived in Lingnan before the Han Dynasty. Wuzhou is located in the middle reaches of the Xijiang River, the junction of Guangxi and Guangdong, with developed water and land transportation, is one of the trading center cities of the Xijiang Waterway, and the convenient transportation conditions and plain terrain make it an early settlement of human beings in Lingnan.
During the Warring States period, the inhabitants here were known as the Xi'ou people, and judging by the excavated burial artifacts, their lives were still in the Bronze Age. However, in the Warring States tombs on the outskirts of Wuzhou, a Chu style string pattern hoof foot dading has also been unearthed, which shows that during this period, the Chu and Xi'ou people had already mixed here and jointly created a splendid culture. Qin Shi Huang excavated the Ling Canal to connect the Yangtze-Xijiang river system, and Wuzhou became an important node in the waterway transportation from the Central Plains to Lingnan. At the beginning of the Han Dynasty, Zhao Tuo established himself as the king of Nanyue, and he regarded Wuzhou as a strategic place, divided his brother Zhao Guang into cangwu kings, and built the cangwu king city, and ran cangwu as a large city in Lingnan.
With the prosperity of trade, a large number of Central Plains people moved south to this place, and a large number of Cultural Relics of the Qin and Han Dynasties unearthed in Wuzhou have obvious Han cultural characteristics in their shapes and ornaments.
Archaeologists also unearthed a small copper cylinder with dragon and phoenix pattern in the Han tomb of Hetou Mountain, with a height of 10 centimeters, a caliber of 3.5 centimeters, and a weight of 131 grams, and the barrel is full of dragons, phoenixes, tigers and other beasts, and the top of the cover is engraved with persimmon patterns, and the overall shape is very exquisite.
What is this cylinder packed with?
Experts searched for information and found that in Xuzhou, Jiangsu Province, a similar copper cylinder had also been unearthed, containing printing clay, so they speculated that this copper cylinder was a printing clay cylinder.
But since it is a cylinder containing printing mud, why is there neither a seal nor a printing clay found in the tomb? To understand the purpose of this copper cylinder, you can only try to open the lid and find out.
After some processing, Li Naixian and the others finally opened the copper cylinder and found that there was an iron needle inside, which had rusted!
The dragon and phoenix pattern small copper cylinder turned out to be a needle and thread tube! Such a beautiful object, just used to hold needles and threads, shows that its owner should be a noble (tu) (hao)!
Judging from the ornamentation on the bronze lamp of The Feather Man and the bronze cylinder of the dragon and phoenix pattern, during the Eastern Han Dynasty, the Ouluo culture in the Guangxin area has been integrated with the Culture of the Central Plains, showing magnificent, unique and pragmatic Lingnan characteristics.
However, although the cultural integration of the Central Plains and Lingnan has been so close, the long distance in space has caused the residents of Guangxin County to have a lot of delays in receiving information from the center of the empire, as if living in the peach blossom garden of "no han, no matter Wei and Jin".
This is the Eastern Han Dynasty wide string pattern copper bowl excavated from the Wuzhou Shipyard in 1972, and the bowl casting craftsman inscribed the casting time at the bottom of the bowl according to the customs of the time - "The tenth day of the first month of the third year of Zhanghe", but searching through the history books, no ancient book records this year.
Originally, in February of the second year of Zhang He (88 AD), the Han Zhang Emperor Liu Zhuo had already died, and his son Liu Zhao, after succeeding to the throne, changed his era name to "Yongyuan" the following year. According to the calendar, the whole country should use the "Yongyuan" era name in the first month of this year (89 AD), but the craftsmen who cast this copper bowl do not seem to know that Emperor Zhang of Han has died, let alone that the imperial court has changed the era name, so the copper bowl is inscribed with the non-existent era name of "Zhanghe Three Years".
Chapter and three years of wide string pattern copper bowl National first-class cultural relics Wuzhou Museum collection
If the Han Dynasty had WeChat, their conversation would have been like this...
Even if it becomes a "wrong version", the owner of the copper bowl does not dislike it, but continues to use it until it is buried underground. Through two thousand years under the dirt, the copper bowl and the feathered copper lamp show people an open and tolerant, slow-paced and relaxed Guangxin.
From the 1960s to the 1980s, nearly 300 Han tombs were discovered in Wuzhou, covering the early Western Han Dynasty to the late Eastern Han Dynasty, and a large number of precious cultural relics were excavated. These exquisite objects confirmed the prosperity of Cangwu County and Guangxin County at that time, and also witnessed the historical changes of the Central Plains-Lingnan cultural fusion, blooming with eternal and brilliant cultural light.