The legend of the Warring States "Chen Zhang Round Kettle"

On the morning of February 10, 1982, when farmers in Nanyaozhuang, Mahu Village, Mudian Township, Xuyi County, were collectively cleaning a small ditch in front of the village, a newlywed boy named Wan Yiquan dug up a heavy copper pot covered with a dazzling leopard-shaped golden beast, and the copper pot was filled with various gold coins. The archaeological community calls these cultural relics "Southern Kiln National Treasures".

According to the text on the copper pot, scholars have verified that this copper pot is the "Chen Zhang Round Kettle" that has been lost for more than 2,000 years, and it is a pair of sister pots with the "Chen Zhang Square Kettle" that has been exiled to the United States in modern times, which were obtained after the Qi general Chen Zhang conquered the capital of the Yan State. In 316 BC, taking advantage of the internal unrest in Yan, King Xuan of Qi sent Chen Zhang to lead a large army to attack the Yan state. After occupying the Yan capital, he "destroyed his ancestral temple and moved his heavy weapons" ("Mencius Liang Hui Wangxia"), and also chiseled off the original characters on a pair of captured copper pots, all of which were engraved with "Five years of the Falcon King, Zhengyang Chen Had to re-establish the age of affairs, Meng Dong Pengchen, Qi Zang Qiankong, Chen Zhang's entry into the Yan State." Twenty-nine words, etc., recorded the war and left precious documents for future generations. Chen Zhang's round pot is very exquisite, the neck and abdomen are decorated with staggered gold and silver oblique checkered cloud patterns, the shoulders are embedded with 48 copper dragons, 48 lines of golden silk plum blossoms and 144 flowers, the abdomen has 48 copper dragons with intersecting heads and tails, 48 lines of golden silk plum blossoms and 432 flowers, and the horizontal hoops of the network set are decorated with 4 ambush beasts and 4 animal face rings. It comprehensively uses casting, welding, filigree, inlay casting, filing, polishing, a variety of mechanical joining and gluing and other process technologies, reaching a very high level, fully embodying the superb technology of bronze production in the Warring States period.

The Great Golden Beast of the Southern Kiln weighs 9100 grams, and the inner wall is engraved with the word "Huang Liu", which is the text of the Qin and Han Dynasties, and scholars have concluded that it is the treasury town treasury beast of the early Western Han Dynasty, and it is the heaviest gold vessel found in China's archaeology. There are 36 gold coins in the Southern Kiln, including gold cakes, horseshoe gold and lin toe gold from the Chu kingdom and the Qin and Han dynasties. Yin Ye is a Chu kingdom gold coin, a total of eleven pieces, weighing 3243.4 grams, are very complete, the front side has a seal book "郢爰" square seal. Among them, there are two full-page pieces of yin ye that have not yet been cut, weighing 610 grams and 466.3 grams respectively, which are the two largest ancient gold plates found in the world. It has been determined that this batch of gold weighs 20 kilograms and has a gold purity of more than 99%, which is unparalleled in the world.

In November 2007, the famous Nanjing Museum selected 18 national treasure-level cultural relics from its collection of 420,000 important cultural relics as "treasures of the town courtyard", "Nanyao Great Golden Beast" ranked first with the most votes and was elected as the "treasure of town protection"; "Chen Zhang's round pot" ranked second and was elected as the "treasure of tiangong". In fact, the cultural relics of the Southern Kiln are all national treasures, and the Southern Kiln National Treasure shocked the world as soon as it came out, and at the same time left too much suspense: Who is its owner? Why buried in this remote village of Nanyao? Twenty-seven years after the Southern Kiln National Treasure was unearthed, no one has been able to solve these mysteries.