Master Archaeologist

Chapter 218 The Defeated Main Tomb
"How do you say? Open a side room?" Kong Jianwen looked at Professor Ke and asked.

After three days of cleaning, the cleaning of the main tomb was basically completed.

It would be unreasonable to say that nothing was unearthed from the main tomb.

In fact, the task of cleaning the main tomb is quite heavy.

Although, complete cultural relics are basically very few.

However, there are still many fragments.

In the disturbed soil of the main tomb, there are a large number of textile fragments.

The types of textiles are very rich, including yarn, Qi, Luo, damask, silk and brocade.

Among them, Qi and brocade account for about 90% of the textile products!

The patterns on these fragments are mostly in the form of clusters, that is, a ring-shaped composition structure that is symmetrical to the left and right with the midline as the axis, surrounded by one or more circles of beads to form a ring.

The patterns can be divided into three categories: plants, animals, and geometric shapes. Lions, birds, dragons, grapes, curly grass, etc. can be seen, some of which have a strong Sogdian style.

The Sogdians are an ancient people who lived in the area of ​​the Amu Darya River and the Syr Darya River in Central Asia in ancient times and spoke the Eastern Iranian branch of the Iranian language family.

Probably during the Eastern Han Dynasty in the Central Plains, the Sogdians began to intersect with the Han people.

They were active on the Silk Road and were famous in Eurasia for their proficiency in business.

Until the 11th century, there were still a large number of Sogdian-speaking villages on the outskirts of KS Gar.

During the Tang Dynasty, a large number of Sogdians lived and settled in the Western Regions, and many of them joined the frontiers of the Tang Dynasty, had Tang Dynasty household registration, and were Tang people.

Of course, the culture of the Sogdians also influenced the cultural aesthetics of the Western Regions, Qinghai, Gansu, and Guanzhong.

As we all know, the status of "silk" in the Tang Dynasty was very high, almost equivalent to currency.

Basically, in the Tang Dynasty, from officials to ordinary people, silk was used for daily transactions, wages and rewards.

Of course, the value of silk produced in different places is also different.

A bolt of high-quality Shu silk can be exchanged for several bolts of Hedong silk.

Therefore, in the Tang Dynasty when silk was equal to money, it was not uncommon for these Tuyuhun people living in Qinghai to own a large amount of silk.

This stuff is hard currency.

King Tuyuhun was buried with silk, which is almost equivalent to being buried with money.

Coincidentally, the plain weave fabrics unearthed are mainly silk and yarn.

Those with sparse density are yarns with holes, the holes are square, and most of them are khaki.There are various colors of silk, including light yellow, khaki, vermilion, blue, and dark brown.

Moreover, the textiles unearthed from this tomb are exquisite in craftsmanship!
There are six known crafts: weaving, painting, lacquer work, embroidery, dyeing, and collage!
But it's a pity that the silk fabrics found in the disturbed soil of the main tomb are all fucking fragments!
The largest piece, which is 10x20 centimeters of silk cloth, is far less than the length of a piece.

Obviously, there should have been a large number of silk cloths in units of "horses" that were buried with them.

However, after being harassed by tomb robbers in the past dynasties, these silk cloths, which were originally preserved one by one, were either stolen, or they were oxidized at an accelerated rate due to the repeated entry of air into the tomb.

Even from the remaining fragments of these silk fabrics, we can see how beautiful these silks are, the red is dazzling, and the gold is brilliant.

There are gold leaf attached to some fragments, which is very luxurious!

One can tell at a glance that all these silks are handcrafted by Datang.

It is absolutely impossible for Tuyuhun people to master the craft of silk making.

It's not that I look down on Tuyuhun people.

But want to do silk, that is a systematic work.

From raising silkworms, planting mulberry trees to finally processing silk into various silks, the intermediate techniques are so complicated that no foreigner can learn them.

Otherwise, it is impossible for the Chinese to sell the silk that has been sold to the world for more than 2000 years, and no foreign nation or country can imitate it.

In a horizontal comparison, Chinese porcelain has only been sold for hundreds of years, and the West has researched the production process of porcelain from the finished product.

Since the 16th and 17th centuries, France and Germany have been able to imitate porcelain.

At one time, many countries in Europe copied Ming Dynasty porcelain, packaged it as porcelain purchased in the Ming Dynasty, and sold it on the European continent.

Up to now, appraisers in the porcelain industry have to specifically identify whether the so-called "family heirloom" porcelain by some Europeans is made in China or imitated by Europe itself.

It can be seen that the number of counterfeit porcelain in the European continent was huge.

However, no Europeans could imitate the silk that entered the European world earlier than porcelain, so they could only buy it from Huaxia at an expensive price.

Until the Europeans invented wool spinning and the Jenny loom, when cheap and large-volume wool fabrics were selling well in the European continent, the upper-class European nobles still regarded wearing oriental silk as a nobility.

Because this thing really cannot be imitated, it must be truly embroidered and woven by Chinese craftsmen to be high-end.

Before World War I, Japan's largest export product was still raw silk, which was sold to Europeans.

The money for the Meiji Restoration came from the Japanese planting mulberry trees.

The raw silk bought by the Europeans was then sold to silk merchants in the south of the Qing Dynasty. They bought high-end silk from them and shipped it back to the European continent for sale, which was a huge profit several times!

It wasn't until China's Kyushu Lu Shen was divided by warlords and invaded by foreign enemies, and after the founding of New China, silk, which could not be industrially produced for some reason, gradually withdrew from its position as the top fabric in the world.

Chinese people can proudly say that from the birth of silk to the present, there is still no foreigner who can imitate the real high-end silk and handmade silk!

Chinese silk is not just a piece of silk fabric, but also a collection of thousands of years of Chinese culture and heritage.

If you don't understand Chinese culture and the historical precipitation of these silk patterns, you can't make good silk.

However, these silk fabrics, which were already excellent and luxurious in the Tang Dynasty, were all left in fragments!
If the silk fabrics in this tomb can be preserved well, it would not be an exaggeration to say that it is adding a national treasure to the country!

Unfortunately, there is no if in this world.

In addition to these fragments of silk fabrics, there are also some trivial pieces of jade belt ornaments, turquoise, agate, colored glaze, and pearls in the disturbed soil of the main tomb.

In addition, a large number of black and white stone flakes were unearthed in the tomb passage and coffin bed.

In addition to these small objects, there are also four conch shells on the altar, which are all the items unearthed in the entire main tomb.

It cannot be said that there are few, but most of them are remnants, and very few are well preserved.

Therefore, Kong Jianwen asked Professor Ke if it was time to see the situation of the other four side rooms.

The main tomb suffered such rampant robbery, and the other four side chambers were probably visited by tomb robbers as well.

But for archaeologists, things that many tomb robbers are not interested in are very precious to archaeologists.

For example, some wooden slips and silk books that record text.

And these things may be placed in the side room!
(End of this chapter)