This nine-story demon tower is composed of a tomb passage, a tomb door, a corridor, an east chamber, a west chamber, a middle chamber and a south chamber.
This "cross-shaped" tomb layout actually follows the precedent of early high-level tombs in Tubo.
For example, it has been recorded in the literature that Songtsen Gampo's tomb was "made in a square grid", "there was a temple without a seat inside the tomb, and the outside was sealed like a mountain".
As for Xuewei Tomb No. 1, the middle chamber is a wooden coffin chamber, plus the three stone chambers in the east, west and south and the north tomb passage, which is also more consistent.
Looking at the funerary objects among them, as early as 2018, the March 15 hot water tomb theft incident had shocked the country, with as many as 646 cultural relics involved.
Starting in 2019, rescue excavations were carried out on the first and second floors that had been excavated.
This time the excavation has made new progress and discoveries, and more funerary objects that reflect the cultural exchanges between China and the West have come into view.
First of all, there are various types of silk fabrics, the most representative of which is the Boluopo Brocade.
This is a Persian brocade from the 8th century, which is unique and unique in the world and has a strong exotic style.
This provides excellent testimony for us to understand the spread of Central Asian patterns to the East.
In addition, there are a large number of gold and silver wares, many of which like to be inlaid with turquoise, which also reflects the Tubo people's special love for turquoise;
】
In addition, the technique of hammering out gold pieces is not only popular in the northern grasslands, but is also applicable in Tubo;
And animal pattern jewelry is still one of the favorite themes of nomadic people.
According to the latest news, nearly a thousand cultural relics were unearthed after three years of rescue work.
Such rich and precious funerary objects make people wonder who the owner of the tomb is?
Among them is a seal that should be a camel, which may be the key to unlocking information about the owner of the tomb.
But what can be speculated at present is that it should belong to a high-level Tuyuhun leader.
In the process of conquering the Qinghai-Tibet Plateau, Tubo successively annexed dozens of small states.
For example, Yangtong, Supi, Tuyuhun, etc.
These small states either had kinship relations with Tubo, or were married to the Tubo royal family, and were deeply influenced by Tubo culture.
As Tubo was a cultural exchange center that spanned the east and west, it is not surprising that various civilizational characteristics appeared in the Tuyuhun tombs under its influence.
Painted human-shaped wooden plaques, gold ornaments inlaid with turquoise, gold vases, gold horse accessories, silk fabrics with rich patterns...
So far, more than 1,000 pieces of various cultural relics including gold, silver, bronze, iron, lacquered wood, leather, jade, glass and textiles have been unearthed.
In 2018, a large number of exquisite relics were unearthed from the Xuewei Tomb No. 1. The craftsmanship and decorative patterns of some of the relics have strong ethnic styles such as Sasanian Persia in Western Asia and Sogdian in Central Asia.
The Yuan Dynasty was the era of the most frequent and successful cultural exchanges between China and the West in history.
Maybe through some things from the Yuan Dynasty, we can also discover some secrets of that place in the Western Regions!
Of course, Chen Wenzhe is not in a hurry, after all, he has no plans to travel to the west now.
Continuing to look at the photos, there are many lotus leaf pattern porcelains mixed in between the two pieces of underglaze red porcelain.
In the Yuan Dynasty, there seems to be a lot of porcelain with this lotus leaf pattern.
After the Yuan Dynasty unified China, they hoped that Han and Mongolia could live in harmony and develop together.
The lotus leaf symbolizes harmony and happiness, so the jar with lotus leaf lid is a typical vessel of Longquan kiln in the Yuan Dynasty, and it is also an auspicious vessel highly praised by the rulers of the Yuan Dynasty.
The shape of the vessel is thick, round and simple, with thick pulp. The simplicity reveals a rich and dignified temperament, which represents the style of that era.
Things are rare and valuable. Since there are more blue and white flowers, they are not too precious.
Therefore, Chen Wenzhe's attention was still focused on the two pieces of underglaze red porcelain.
An underglaze red cup with a rotating handle, 10cm high, 7.7cm in diameter, and 3.8cm in foot diameter.
The cup has a slender mouth, a deep belly, a thin bottom, and a hollow bamboo-shaped high foot.
The whole body is covered with green and white glaze, and three red spots in the glaze are applied to the cup body, juxtaposed with a small circle.
The bottom of the cup and the high foot are connected with tenon and tenon, and can rotate freely without being disengaged.
The decorative patches on this cup are brightly colored and as beautiful as the sunset. It is truly a rare treasure.
The cup foot can be rotated at will, which makes it more enjoyable.
In 1980, a Yuan Dynasty underglaze red printed plastic goblet with panchi patterns was unearthed from the Yuan Dynasty porcelain cellar in Gao'an, Xijiang. The base of the cup can also be rotated.
It can be seen from this that the handle-turning goblet should be one of the characteristics of the goblet in the Yuan Dynasty.
The other piece is an underglaze red jade vase with rabbit pattern, 20.5cm high, 6.3cm in diameter and 6.8cm in foot diameter.
The bottle has a curled mouth, a narrow neck, a hanging belly, and a circled foot.
The whole body is covered with green and white glaze, and there are 4 darkly carved string patterns on the shoulders and the largest abdominal diameter.
A hare is carved on the upper abdomen, running among the flowers and grass.
The little rabbit looked back and looked at it, dotting its eyes with underglaze red.
The overall carving technique of this instrument is skillful, the blade is sharp and free and easy, the lines are smooth and natural, and the image is lifelike.
Underglaze red is applied randomly to the blank areas of the pattern to form white flowers on a red ground, which enhances the artistic effect of the pattern.
Paint the mouth of the bottle with underglaze red.
The jade pot spring vase is a common type of Jingzhen porcelain in the Yuan Dynasty. In addition to the red glaze, there are also blue and white glazes, blue and white glazes, blue and white glazes with malachite green glaze, etc.
After looking through all the photos, Chen Wenzhe unexpectedly found a piece of sapphire-quality blue-glazed porcelain among them.
This is a sapphire-glazed flat pot with dragon and phoenix patterns. It is covered with white glaze, and the dragon and phoenix patterns in it are sapphire blue.
In fact, before the Yuan Dynasty, my country's porcelain was mainly white porcelain and celadon with plain colors.
Colored porcelain appeared relatively late, and people in the Tang Dynasty began to apply blue glaze on porcelain.
In the Yuan Dynasty, Jingzhen adopted a new production process, which was to melt "cobalt" into the glaze as a coloring agent, and fired a beautiful sapphire-like cobalt blue glaze.
At this time, the blue glaze still used cobalt oxide as the colorant, and the glaze had already used high-temperature lime alkali glaze.
High-temperature lime alkali glaze has the characteristics of viscosity and strong adhesion, which makes the glaze layer and the carcass closely bonded.
The high temperature makes the color bright and smooth, which is deeper and more elegant than the blue of the three colors, and has a luster similar to that of sapphire. Therefore, this high-temperature blue glaze is also called sapphire blue glaze.
Between the pure white glaze, dragons and phoenixes like sapphires suddenly appear, which is naturally beautiful.
From this we can also see that the egg white glazed porcelain of the Yuan Dynasty is also unique.
After rummaging around for a while, Chen Wenzhe found a photo of an egg white glaze printed cloud and dragon pattern plate.
This type of egg white glazed porcelain is the most common, but the craftsmanship is definitely top-notch.
This white glazed plate is 4.1 cm high, 15.9 cm in diameter, and 5.3 cm in full diameter.
The plate is open, with shallow arc walls and circle feet.
The carcass is pure white, with egg white glaze applied inside and outside.
The inner bottom and inner wall are stenciled with cloud and dragon patterns.
This is the standard Privy Glaze, also known as "egg white glaze".
The main decorative technique is stenciling, and the themes are relatively simple. Common ones include dragon patterns, reed and wild goose patterns, or entangled branches.
Because the word "Privy" is often imprinted in the middle of the pattern of these white-glazed porcelain, it is called "Privy-glazed white porcelain".