Master Archaeologist

Chapter 68 This is the root of our cultural confidence!

The bamboo slips stripped from the silt, the first thing to do is to wash the stains in water.

Ronghua took Chen Han around the workshop.

He clearly saw the staff, soaking the bamboo slips that had been preliminarily cleaned up one by one in the water, and gently stroked off the dirt with a wolf hair brush.Wash away the dirt and leave the words.

"Actually, don't look at the shape of the water-filled bamboo slips, which seem to be intact. In fact, the texture is very fragile. You who do archaeology are also aware of this."

Ronghua pointed to the staff's careful movements, and sighed a little: "The unearthed water-filled bamboo slips feel like the skin of a baby."

"Blowing bombs can break!"

"So when dealing with them, we must be careful and not sloppy."

"Each person, if they are proficient, can only clean 5-10 pieces a day."

"The batch of bamboo slips sent by the Archaeological Institute of your Academy of Social Sciences, even if we step up the processing, it will take three to five days to clear them all."

Before he finished speaking, Ronghua casually picked up a bottle of transparent liquid similar to pure water on the table, and taught Chen Han:
"Don't look at the water that looks the same as the pure water commonly used in the laboratory, but this is not pure water."

"In the past, we used to soak the bamboo slips in pure distilled water for cleaning. The purpose is to remove a large number of harmful free particles in the bamboo slips."

"This method has been used for decades, and it has become a relatively mature process system."

"However, using distilled water is not a perfect practice."

"Distilled water contains a lot of free ions, which will erode the bamboo slips."

"And this feature is also one of the reasons for the low restoration rate of the early bamboo slips."

"It is also due to the advancement of science and technology, and a better soaking liquid, deionized water, was born."

"The emergence of deionized water prevents the ions in the water from damaging bamboo slips to the greatest extent, and greatly improves the repair rate of bamboo slips."

"Now all the water used in the bamboo slip restoration room is deionized water."

Chen Han watched the staff meticulously clean up the bamboo slips, and nodded in response to Ronghua.

He is no stranger to deionized water, and now many laboratories in colleges and universities are using a large amount of deionized water in experiments.

As a kind of extremely pure water that removes impurities and various ions in the water, it is naturally more popular in high-precision experiments.

It's just that Chen Han didn't expect that deionized water was also needed to restore the bamboo slips.

It was indeed a lesson.

Chen Han followed Ronghua very humbly, trying his best to understand and learn how to restore the bamboo slips.

Although his academic performance in archeology at Peking University is very good, he can be said to be a proper student.

But he hasn't reached the level of learning God.

During my college career, I only had time to learn the knowledge of field archaeology, history, and identification of cultural relics.

He has little knowledge in the field of cultural relic restoration, which is related to archaeology but is basically out of reach of field archaeology.

The system that fell from the sky, among the six skill trees given by Chen Han, only the restoration of cultural relics is LV0.

In the field of cultural relic restoration, he is indeed a younger brother.

Ronghua took him through the restoration process of bamboo slips.

After the bamboo slips were washed with deionized water, they were still oxidized black. After that, the second step of bamboo slip restoration was needed, which was decolorization.

Decolorization is the use of chemicals to restore the original color of bamboo slips.

In this process, the ink with stable composition will not be chemically reduced, and the writing will still be preserved.

It is worth mentioning that the decolorization chemicals currently used in the industry were developed by the Jingzhou Cultural Protection Center.

After decolorization, the bamboo slips will return to their original yellow color, and all the ink stains on the slips will reappear.

As for the bamboo slips that have been successfully decolorized and restored, Chen Shuren, a master among the bamboo slip restorers, is required to start dehydrating the bamboo slips.

Dehydration is not too complicated, but it requires experience and staying up late.

The decolorized slips are full of water, and removing the water directly will cause the slips to collapse or even break.

Therefore, decolorization is not simply a matter of drying the moisture of the bamboo slips in an oven.

Instead, the method of chemical replacement must first be used to replace the water with ethanol.

Only after the ethanol fills the inside of the slips can the slips be prevented from being deformed due to dehydration.

After the water has been replaced, the bamboo slips can be put into the drying box to dry.

And this kind of dryer for drying bamboo slips is also specially made, and it needs to run non-stop for nine days and nine nights once it is started.

In order to avoid the temperature fluctuation of the oven, which would cause the bamboo slips to crack, the restorer of the bamboo slips in charge of dehydration almost had to stay in the studio for food and lodging.

Couldn't even sleep properly and had to check the thermometer every two hours to make sure the temperature wasn't fluctuating.

After more than 200 hours of continuous work in this way, the humidity of the bamboo slips has been removed by 80%, which is considered to be dehydration.

Ronghua took Chen Han to the special "slip washing" room, and picked up a bamboo slip that had been dehydrated.

At this time, the bamboo slip had turned back to dark yellow, and the ink marks on the bamboo slip were still clearly visible.

"There is actually no specific quantitative standard for depigmentation and dehydration, and it can only rely on personal experience and feelings."

Ronghua slightly waved the bamboo slip in his hand, and put it into a pot of chemical liquid in the slip washing room in front of Chen Han.

There are no too complicated actions, and there are no cool scenes of scientists with explosions and smoke on TV.

He just submerged the bamboo slip into the potion and waved it lightly a few times.

After shaking it a few times lightly like rinsing tripe when eating hot pot, the bamboo slips that were taken out of the potion had already turned bright beige.

And the handwriting on the bamboo slips became extremely clear, as if it had just been written.

"In this way, a bamboo slip filled with water has been restored."

"If individual handwriting on the bamboo slips is a bit too light or missing, you can simply fill it up with ink."

"Then, after another month of natural air-drying for these bamboo slips to stabilize the structure, they can be packed into a plexiglass plate and sealed for storage."

Ronghua handed the bamboo slips that had gone through the final "washing" process to Chen Han.

This is a Han bamboo slip. Chen Han clearly saw a line of small seal characters on the small slip.

"In 14 years, he defeated Han Wei and killed Gongsun Xiyique."

"This is the bamboo slip that recorded the battle of Yique?" Chen Han looked at Ronghua in astonishment.

Rong Hua nodded: "This is one of the batches of bamboo slips unearthed in the tomb M12 excavated by the Jingzhou Museum in Hujiacaochang earlier this year."

"A total of 12 bamboo slips and 4636 wooden tablets were unearthed from tomb M6, and the condition of preservation is generally good."

"We have restored almost half of the bamboo slips so far. We can confirm that these bamboo slips are roughly divided into ages, legal orders, calendars, medical miscellaneous prescriptions, thin books, and dispatch books."

"The batch in the slip-washing room is Sui Ji slips, about 160 pieces, two groups in total."

"The root in your hand is the first group that records the major events from the first year of King Qin Zhaoxiang to the period of Qin Shihuang. It is in chronological style, with one column for each year."

"The second group records the major events from Emperor Qin II to Emperor Wen of the Han Dynasty. It is also in the chronological style, with one slip every year."

"The archaeological team of the Jingzhou Museum has determined that the burial date of the M12 tomb was not earlier than the first year of Emperor Wen of the Han Dynasty."

"This is a batch of historical documents earlier than Shiji!"

"It has important academic value. It can be used as official history and supplementary history. It also involves the history of Han, Wei and Qin during the Warring States period. It is quite precious."

"These bamboo slips condense the wisdom of our ancestors and the history of our nation, and are the root of our cultural confidence."

Ronghua put away the bamboo slip very solemnly, with a serious expression on his face.

"For thousands of years, our Chinese culture has never been cut off, even if it is because of such a unique way of inheritance and continuation!"

"If there is no restoration of these bamboo slips, the fog of Chinese history may be covered forever."

"The living historical materials of the Three Kingdoms of Wei, Han and Qin will also remain historical mysteries forever."

"But we succeeded in restoring these bamboo slips!"

"Do our best to preserve the glorious history of China and the inheritance of Chinese culture, and also keep cultural confidence in the hearts of every Chinese person."

"This is the meaning of our cultural relic restoration workers!"

　There is indeed such a batch of bamboo slips, the Han bamboo slips in Hujiacaochang, Jingzhou.

　　Discovered between 2018.10-2019.3, the timeline in the book was slightly advanced by me.

　　Part of the restoration process and content reference: Hubei Daily: [Jingzhou Cultural Relic Protection Expert Fang Beisong: Using New Technology to Make Millennium Bamboo Slips "Speak"]

　　
　
(End of this chapter)