Master Archaeologist

Chapter 103 Chu script (please subscribe!)
"chimes?!"

Chen Han followed quickly, and walked out with Zhang Jianbo.

"Senior brother Zhang, how many chimes are there in this group?"

"Temporarily, three have been unearthed, one of which is relatively dilapidated, and the other two are well preserved."

As soon as chime bells were mentioned, Chen Han immediately thought of Zenghouyi chime bells.

There is no way, this set of chime bells is too famous, even more famous than Goujian Sword of the King of Yue, it is a real national heavy weapon.

However, in addition to the chime bells of Marquis Yi of Zeng, Huaxia archeology has also successively unearthed many complete sets or individual chime bells.

The music of chime bells is clear and bright, melodious and pleasant, and can play the same melody as singing, so it is also known as singing bell.

As early as the Shang Dynasty 3500 years ago, there were chime bells in China, but most of the chime bells at that time were in sets of three.

The real rise of chime bells came after the Western Zhou Dynasty.

Among the rituals of the Zhou Dynasty, music was also a kind of ritual. At that time, only nobles could enjoy music, and the music enjoyed by nobles of different ranks was also different.

For example, the sentence in "The Analects of Confucius" "It is tolerable to dance in the court, which is unbearable." It is Confucius used to scold the Ji family's overreach system in Lu State.

Yi refers to a row of music and dance, one refers to a row of eight people, and eight to eight rows of 64 people.

According to the strict system of Zhou Li, only the emperor can use eight yi, princes use six yi, high officials use four yi, and scholars use two yi.

The Ji family is the Zhengqing of the Lu State. According to the system, they can only use four qi, but they exceed the standard of playing music and dancing that can only be enjoyed by the emperor, so Confucius pointed their noses and scolded him.

Confucius described the social mentality at the end of the Spring and Autumn Period as "ritual collapse and music decay". It can be seen that in the eyes of Zhou people, music is a sacred and advanced thing, which is closely linked to the whole society.

In fact, not only in China, but in the history of Europe, early music was also a high-end entertainment that only the upper-class nobles could enjoy.

As a musical instrument exclusively used by the upper-class Chinese nobles, chime bells are a symbol of rank and power, and there are also a set of rules for their use.

The chime bells of the Shang Dynasty need to be composed of at least 3 bells, and if there are more, it will be 5.

In the middle and late Western Zhou Dynasty, the chime bells had developed from 3 or 5 bells to a group of 8 bells, which could produce two tones separated by a minor third or major third.

The chime bells at that time were often played at court banquets and were called "the music of bells and drums".

In the middle and late Spring and Autumn period, it was increased to a group of 9 pieces or a group of 13 pieces.

By the Warring States Period, there were even more sets of chime bells.

Depending on the owner's "financial resources" and love for music, more clocks can be added to increase the layering and grandeur of the performance.

The famous Chime Bells of Marquis Yi of Zeng is a super-large set of 65 chime bells of various kinds.

It not only shows the pinnacle of my country's music culture and bronze casting technology, but also Zenghouyi's chime bells are nearly 2000 years earlier than the appearance of European twelve-tempered keyboard instruments.

When it comes to playing twelve equal temperaments, the piano is the younger brother in front of the chime!

Now the chime bell has been unearthed from tomb M1, that is a big deal!
But Chen Han was so excited that he quickly ran to the cultural relics storage room.

Not that he loves music so much.

Mainly, this chime has an inscription!
Almost all chime bells will have inscriptions engraved on the bell body, and the engraved content generally has a lot of information!

After a few steps, Chen Han and Zhang Jianbo came to the cultural relic storage room.

It was already past eight o'clock in the evening, but the cultural relics storage room was still brightly lit. Professor Li and Kong Jianwen brought several researchers from the Xia, Shang, Zhou and Qin Han research laboratories together at the table in the center of the room.

The three chimes, surrounded by them, were constantly being looked at.

Chen Han quickly moved over and started to size up.

The shape of these three chime bells is roughly the same, they are all Yong bells, and the bell bodies are oblate and round like composite tiles, with ribs, thin at the top and thick at the bottom, and their appearance looks similar to those of the chime bells displayed in the museum.
The body of the utensil is decorated with dense and small panchi patterns in relief. It feels that if you touch it with your hands, it will definitely be difficult.

The three chimes are of different sizes, and the largest is estimated to be three or four times the size of the smallest.

"Xiao Chen, are you here?"

Noticing Chen Han's Kong Jianwen, he waved him over and introduced him, "These three chime bells have just been cleared from the sand pile in tomb M1."

“刚才已经测量过了，最大的这个1号编钟通高112厘米，2号高48厘米，3号23厘米。”

"The No. 2 chime is severely damaged. It's a pity. If the broken pieces of the chime can be found from the sand pile, it may be possible to repair it."

"But the important thing is the No. 1 chime!"

"There are inscriptions cast on the front and back of the bell body of No. 1 chime, the left and right drums on the front, and the left and right drums on the back."

"The clock has a total of 169 gold characters!"

"Professor Li initially identified it, it should be a seal."

"It will be rubbed as soon as possible. Let's study it together and see what is recorded in this inscription."

Kong Jianwen's expression was a little agitated and excited, and he felt like exploring a secret.

Bronze inscriptions refer to the inscriptions cast on the bronzes of the Yin, Shang and Zhou dynasties, also called Zhong Dingwen.

It is the general term for the inscriptions on the bronzes of the Shang, Western Zhou, Spring and Autumn, and Warring States periods.

Dazhuan, on the other hand, is a kind of script popular in the late Western Zhou Dynasty, inherited from oracle bone inscriptions, and inspired from Xiaozhuan in the Qin Dynasty.

It is precisely because handwriting is mostly engraved on bells and tripods, so it is generally better to preserve the original writing than oracle bone inscriptions, and has a simple and simple style.

However, Dazhuan was not a unified script in the Zhou Dynasty.

The fonts of inscriptions engraved on bronze wares vary greatly in different periods.

Especially in the Spring and Autumn Period and the Warring States Period, due to the separatist regimes of various countries, the seal characters of various countries have formed regional characteristics.

Can't say it's completely different, but it's definitely not that small.

Otherwise, Empress Qin Shi would not have come up with Qin Zhuan (Xiao Zhuan) for this purpose.

"Great seal, tomb M1 is the tomb of Marquis Zeng, so it should be the Chu seal used?"

Chen Han frowned, and after saying hello to several researchers, he looked closer at the inscription on the No. 1 chime drum.

Sure enough, the inscription on the No. 1 chime is slender, with thin strokes and the same beginning and end.

It looks neat and beautiful, and the strokes are round and smooth.

From the physical point of view, it is roughly similar to the oracle bone inscriptions-seal script system that has been inherited from the Central Plains, but it has its own unique features.

The Chu seal script in the Western Zhou Dynasty was not much different from the seal script in the Central Plains.

It was not until the end of the Spring and Autumn period to the middle of the Warring States period that Chu State added bird-shaped decorations on the basis of seal script, and evolved bird seal script and insect script that were quite different from the Central Plains characters.

The inscription on the No. 1 chime is just a slender style of Chu Zhuan in shape.

However, it did not convert the expressive form of text lines into decorative animal patterns such as bird, insect and fish.

However, even the seal script is a bit beyond Chen Han's knowledge.

His skill points are on Xiaozhuan.
Xiaozhuan evolved from Qin characters.

Because it was the Qin State that unified the world, in the history of the development of Chinese characters, the characters of the Qin family represent the mainstream of the development of Chinese characters, and the characters of the six countries only represent the tributaries.

Therefore, the scripts of the Spring and Autumn and Warring States Periods can be divided into two lines, namely, the Qin scripts and the Six Kingdoms scripts.

The chime bell inscriptions in tomb No. M1 obviously belong to the writing system of the six countries, and among the writing systems of the six countries, the Chu language developed only in the south.
Chen Han, who is proficient in small seal script, was at a loss when faced with the 169 large seal scripts from Chu State.

(End of this chapter)