My system is not decent

Chapter 1298 The imperial gift of gold bricks as a congratulatory gift

According to statistics, only this time in the tomb of King Liangzhuang, more than 5300 burial objects of various categories, such as gold, silver, jade, and precious stones, were unearthed.

Among them, there are more than 1400 pieces of gold, silver, and jade, and more than 3400 pieces of beaded gemstones.

Its level of luxury is unprecedented among the princes of the Ming Dynasty that have been excavated, second only to Ming Shenzong's Dingling Tomb, and it is another major archaeological discovery of the Ming Dynasty after Dingling Tomb.

Some of these classic ornaments have a lot of gems on them.

The most famous one must be the "gold-studded gem cap" and a 200-carat "colorless sapphire", which is also the largest one in our country so far.

Speaking of this, some people can't help asking curiously, "How much is such a big gem worth?"

Experts also responded to this: it is impossible to estimate;
Some friends may not understand, gems, like gold and silver, are measured by weight, how can it be "invaluable"?

Let me say a few more words here. Generally speaking, the value of gold and silver is mostly in grams, and its value is converted based on the total weight;

But "gemstones" are different. Generally speaking, every time a gemstone increases by one carat, its value is not "cumulative", but may double.

It weighs "200 carats", plus the historical value, which is the main reason why experts say it is "unvaluable".

Some friends may ask, such a large colorless sapphire should be the most valuable cultural relic in the tomb of King Liangzhuang, right?

The answer is also unexpected. The most valuable in the tomb of King Liangzhuang is not the 200-carat "colorless sapphire", but two "golden bricks" of fifty taels, totaling 100 taels.

Friends who know something about the tomb of King Liangzhuang may know that the cultural relics in this tomb are "invaluable".

In addition to precious stones, such as filigree-inlaid gemstone belts, gold-inlaid white jade belts, etc., are all national treasures;
On the contrary, the value of gold and silver seems much dimmed.

How could the value of "colorless sapphire" not be worth two or one hundred taels of "golden bricks"?

To put it simply, two gold bricks, one is 13 cm long, 9.8 cm wide, 1 cm thick, and weighs 1937 grams;
The other piece is 14 cm long, 10 cm wide, 0.8 cm thick, and weighs 1874.3 grams;
One of the gold bricks was engraved with the words "In the [-]th year of Yongle, one ingot of [-]% gold was bought in Western countries and [-] taels of weight".

The literal meaning is easy to understand, mainly talking about the weight and source of the two gold bricks.

Here is the important point, these two gold bricks are actually imported goods imported from the "Western Ocean" by Zheng He on his voyages;
According to the "History of Ming Dynasty", the "golden brick" was an engagement gift given to the royal family and nobles by the court of the Ming Dynasty, which also shows that King Liangzhuang married twice in his life.

Friends who have studied history may say, "Don't talk nonsense."

Two gold bricks were unearthed in the tomb, so it is said that King Liangzhuang was married twice?There is no basis at all;

Ming Liang Zhuang Wang died at the age of thirty and had no heirs in his life, so he was removed from his title in the end.

At first glance, this argument makes sense.

"History of the Ming Dynasty" records "Liangzhuang King Zhanyi, Renzong concubine nine sons, Xuande four years in Anluzhou. Orthodox six years. No sons, sealed off."

To put it bluntly, the king of Liangzhuang is called "Zhu Zhanji (jì)", the ninth son of Ming Renzong and the great-grandson of Ming Taizu Zhu Yuanzhang;

Zhu Zhanyi was granted the title of "King of Liang", and his fiefdom was in today's Beihu Province. He died of illness at the age of thirty without leaving any heirs. Because of this, the title of "King of Liang" was removed by the court.

This raises several questions: How could King Liang Zhuang suddenly die suddenly while he was standing?
Zhu Zhanyi is a vassal king, it stands to reason that there should be a group of wives and concubines, how could he have no heirs?
Now that the title of "King of Liangzhuang" has been removed, why does the emperor attach so much importance to his tomb?
None of these issues were mentioned in "History of the Ming Dynasty", and they have added a lot of unsolved mysteries to today's historical research;

Finally, among the piles of gold, silver and jade wares, the archaeological team found two "stone" epitaphs and two gold-plated seals.

Only then did a corner of the mysterious veil of "King Liangzhuang" be solved.

It turns out that in the tomb of King Liangzhuang, there is not only "Zhu Zhanyi" alone, but to be precise, it is a "joint burial tomb for husband and wife";
The strange thing is that it was not his "principal wife" who accompanied King Liangzhuang, but his second wife.

To put it simply, the "King of Liang Zhuang" got married at the age of seventeen, and his first wife was the Ji family, and the two got along well;

It's a pity that Mrs. Ji passed away early, which made Liang Zhuang Wang very depressed. He missed his ex-wife so much that he didn't remarry for five years until he met his second wife, Mrs. Wei.

It was also because King Liangzhuang had a good fate, and the Wei family was more gentle and considerate. The two hit it off, were happy, and gave birth to two little "princess masters".

King Liangzhuang got married twice, and Emperor Ming gave "golden bricks" twice as congratulatory gifts. This is the value of these two gold bricks.

It's a pity that the good times didn't last long. King Liangzhuang and the Wei family only lived for eight years before another accident happened.

This time it was the turn of the "Liangzhuang King" who had just turned thirty to die;
Although the Wei family was not the official wife, she had a deep affection for the king of Liangzhuang, and she wanted to be buried with her husband several times, and this matter also brought trouble to the court.

At that time, the orthodox emperor of the Ming Dynasty was in power, and he was still the nephew of King Liangzhuang in terms of seniority;

The Emperor Ming was impressed by the deep affection between the husband and wife of King Liangzhuang, and finally issued an "edict" personally, ordering the Wei family not to execute themselves, and to continue to retain the fief and palace of "King Liangzhuang", so that the Wei family can raise their two young daughters with peace of mind.

This was not easy in ancient times.

Because it stands to reason that King Liangzhuang has no son, and no one inherits the title of King Liang, so the fief has to be taken back.

Since it was the emperor's "decree", the Wei family had no choice but to stop distracting thoughts and continue to raise the two daughters;
Or he was eager to think about the king. In a few years, the Wei family was still seriously ill and left a will when he was dying, hoping to be buried with King Liangzhuang.

To clarify, the "Tomb of King Liangzhuang" was not originally designed for joint burials, but only one chamber;
The Wei family had this wish, so the craftsmen had to dig up the tomb of King Liangzhuang again and temporarily built another tomb.

This is why the archaeological team found another tomb, but "the tomb door is broken, but there are no fragments".

One more point, perhaps hundreds of years ago, the story of Liang Zhuang Wang and his wife was so famous that local masters from all walks of life "patronized" one after another;
For unknown reasons, the Tufuzi destroyed the structure of the tomb, causing water to accumulate in the tomb.

At first glance, this is an act of destroying ancient tombs. Who would have imagined that "water accumulation" has become the most powerful protection measure.

This has created the miracle of "although there are rare treasures in the tomb, they have not been stolen for the first time in hundreds of years";

There are also the barbaric behavior of the modern Tufuzi who used explosives, which almost completely destroyed this ancient tomb.

However, they also found nothing because of the stagnant water and the inability to excavate on a large scale.

Of course, thanks to the timely excavation by the archaeological team, not only saved more than 5300 precious cultural relics, but also revealed a romantic history that had been dusty for hundreds of years.

Romantic or not, Chen Wenzhebing is not interested, he is most interested in the treasures inside.

For example, gold silk-inlaid sapphire hollow-out double luan peony hairpins, trapezoidal gold silk-inlaid gem hairpins, peach-shaped gold silk-inlaid gem hairpins, gold-inlaid gemstone bracelets, golden phoenix hairpins, etc.

(End of this chapter)