Guanzhong Tomb Robbery Notes

Chapter 264 Ivory, is that you, Lao Zhang?

Bones, piles of bones filled the sight.

I've never seen so many bones.

Huge white bones lay crisscrossed on the ground.

The most numerous ones are white bones that are thick at the bottom and pointed at the top with curves, like wild boar tusks magnified a hundred times.

We were getting closer to the shore.

It suddenly occurred to me that it might be ivory!

At that time, I had only seen elephants in books, and they were line drawings.

I haven't even seen a picture of an elephant.

So I didn’t think of ivory first.

Wild elephants are now only distributed in southern Yunnan Province.

The only other place you can see elephants is in a zoo.

In ancient times, at least before the Shang and Zhou dynasties, elephants existed in the Yellow River Basin.

"Lüshi Chunqiu" records: The Shang people used elephants to oppress the Dongyi people.

The unearthed oracle bones from the Shang Dynasty also record the capture of elephants.

The abbreviation of Henan Province, "Yu", is a pictograph of a person leading an elephant in oracle bone script, which also indirectly proves that elephants existed in the north at that time.

In my later tomb-robbing career, I often found ivory products such as elephant rings and elephant hairpins in the tombs of Shang and Zhou nobles.

The luckiest time was when I found a pair of ivory-inlaid turquoise cups in the tomb of a Shang Dynasty noble.

The ivory cup inlaid with turquoise is so beautiful that it beats all the so-called luxury cups nowadays. We will talk about where it was dug in detail later.

Whole ivory tusks were also unearthed from the tombs of emperors and nobles during the Western Han Dynasty.

According to historical records and the use of whole ivory tusks as burial objects, there was a small population of elephants distributed in the north during the Western Han Dynasty.

what is interesting is.

Later, I dug up a prince's tomb from the early Western Han Dynasty in the south.

However, a large number of wooden imitations of ivory and rhino horns were found in the burial coffin chamber.

I was confused at that time.

The tomb chamber contains an extraordinary wealth of gold, silver, and jade artifacts, but how come the ivory and rhino horns are made of wood?

After that, I consulted the "Book of Han" and finally understood the whole story.

It turns out that during the Qin and Han dynasties, lavish burials were popular, and most of a family's wealth would often be buried as burial objects in a single funeral.

This hindered the recovery and development of people's livelihood in the early Western Han Dynasty.

In order to reverse the trend, simple burials were promoted during the reigns of Emperor Wen of Han and Emperor Jing of Han.

He also issued an edict requiring princes and nobles not to use ivory and rhino horns as burial objects.

So wooden ivory and rhino horns were used as burial objects.

During the reign of Emperor Wu of Han, the custom of lavish burials became popular again, and even became more extreme than before.

Therefore, tomb robbers throughout the ages have liked to rob Han tombs, to the point that today nine out of ten Han tombs are empty.

During the Three Kingdoms period, Sun Quan presented an elephant to Cao Cao, which gave rise to the story of Cao Chong weighing the elephant.

This also indirectly reflects that elephants have become extinct in the north.

Elephants only survive in the Yangtze River basin.

Let’s get back to the present.

Cui Hao and I were stunned by the ivory all over the floor.

As the current drifted us to the shore, we walked towards the nearest tusk.

Cui Hao compared his arm with the ivory.

"Oh my God!"

“So thick.”

"The tusks of a wild boar weighing three or four hundred pounds are not as big as the tip of this thing."

"Brother, what the hell is this tooth?"

Cui Hao hadn't thought about the elephant yet.

To be honest, we didn't know anything about elephants at that time.

"Maybe ivory."

I squatted down slowly and gently touched the ivory with my left hand.

Ivory looks white from a distance.

When you look closely, it is milky yellow, and even yellow-brown near the water, and the surface is covered with cracks of various sizes.

Friends who have played with ivory should know that this thing is not easy to raise.

Apply oil daily and prevent large temperature differences between indoors and outdoors in cold weather.

If you are not careful, it will crack and show you.

There is a saying in the antique industry that "nine out of ten teeth are cracked."

Anything made of ivory will inevitably crack over time.

In order to beautify this crack, the industry calls the crack in teeth a "smile".

If the ivory is cracked, we should say that the ivory is smiling.

“It turns out to be a large tusk.”

"The teeth are this big, how big must an elephant be?"

I also can't answer how big an elephant is.

I could only casually say, "It's about the size of your main room."

"So, boss."

"Brother, is ivory valuable?"

"If it's valuable, let's get rid of all this old ivory..."

Cui Hao's greed for money came back again.

Looking at the ivory all over the ground is like seeing gold ingots all over the ground.

He completely forgot about the danger.

I'm not sure about the value of ivory.

But I know that now is not the time to think about whether it is worth the money.

You have to survive first!

Snapped.

I gently patted Cui Hao on the back of his head.

"What are you thinking about?"

"Even if it's worth money, we still have to live to spend it."

"Hurry up and eat something to rest."

After saying that, I found a clean place to sit down.

Open your backpack and take out the food.

The food was prepared by Old Man Su.

A palm-sized piece of bacon is sandwiched in the pancake carefully wrapped in oil paper.

The steamed bacon has a mixture of smoky flavor and greasy aroma, which makes people's mouths water at the mere smell.

Gululu.

The aroma of meat makes my hungry stomach rumble.

My intestines are urging me to eat quickly.

But I stared at the pancakes and bacon in a daze.

The honest smile of Old Man Su appeared in my mind.

pity……

His body had been torn apart.

Tears blurred my eyes again.

I tilted my head back and sniffed hard, trying to suck back the tears that were overflowing.

Cui Hao reached out and gently wiped away the tears from the corners of my eyes.

"Brother, don't think about it."

"Didn't Su Sheng say that there was a way to revive Old Man Su and the others?"

"We'll just help him revive when the time comes."

"Hmm." I squeezed out a sound from my nose.

He lowered his head and took a big bite of the pancake.

When you take a bite, the aroma of wheat spreads in your mouth.

This is followed by the bursting of fat when the fat is bitten, and the meaty aroma and smoky flavor overflowing from the lean meat.

I wiped away my tears while eating.

After finishing the pancake with bacon, I raised the kettle and took two sips of water.

He stood up and shone the emergency light around.

In addition to ivory, there are also skeletons of various animals and a small number of human skeletons.

I don't understand why there are so many bones here.

We can only guess that this might be a place where burial objects or spoils of war were placed.

As time passed, the flesh rotted, leaving only bones.

The light shines far away.

I vaguely saw a person squatting on the ground.

I wanted to use the qi-gazing technique to confirm it, but after blinking for a long time, I still couldn't use the qi-gazing technique.

It was only then that I noticed that Huang Ziming was missing!

When did this guy disappear?

I frowned as I recalled.

It seemed as if he had disappeared when we jumped into the river and floated downstream!

This guy is really unreliable!

I saw Cui Hao still squatting on the ground eating a cake.

So I said, "Mouse, watch over here."

"I'll go over there and watch first."

Cui Hao immediately put down the cake, wiped his mouth and said, "Let's go together."

"It's better not to act separately in this damn place."

"Alright."

We both put on our backpacks and walked towards the squatting figure holding up the emergency lights.

Walk closer.

A grinding sound similar to teeth is heard.

Along with the creaking sound, you can see the man's head shaking rhythmically with the creaking sound.

This weird scene made my scalp tingle.

After taking two more steps, I felt that the figure was very familiar.

It seems to be Taoist Priest Zhang!

"Lao Zhang?"

"Is that you, Lao Zhang?!"