In August 1992, a set of Western Zhou bronze chimes appeared in the Hong Kong cultural relics market, which was well preserved and attracted top collectors from Hong Kong, Taiwan, Japan and other places to bid for it. Unexpectedly, however, when they saw the inscription on the chime, all the buyers were momentarily afraid to sell.
Because the inscription on this chime is not cast, but engraved. You know, bronze is a very hard material, in ancient times, if you want to engrave words on it, you will definitely use iron, but at that time the archaeological community generally believed that the application time of iron was the Spring and Autumn Warring States period, and the Western Zhou Was two or three hundred years earlier than the Spring and Autumn Period, so the chimes of this set of inscriptions are likely to be imitations.
All the chimes with inscriptions unearthed before are cast, and no inscriptions have been found, although there have been chimes inscribed on the market, but after expert research, these chimes inscribed with inscriptions are all fake, and it is precisely for this reason that this set of chimes is not favored by buyers, so no buyer dares to bid easily.
Professor Zhang Guangyu of the University of Chinese in Hong Kong was also skeptical when he saw the chimes, but fortunately he knew Ma Chengyuan, the director of the Shanghai Museum, who was the "first person to identify Chinese bronzes". So Zhang Guangyu sent photos and inscription rubbings of this set of chimes to Ma Chengyuan.
After receiving it, Ma Chengyuan conducted a careful study, and after research, he believed that this set of chimes was likely to be a real Western Zhou cultural relic.
Ma Chengyuan and many archaeologists studied this set of chimes for a long time, and finally after repeated discussions, they agreed that this set of chimes is a real Western Zhou cultural relic, and the inscriptions on the chimes are not forged by the later market, but were carved more than 2,000 years ago. This discovery directly pushed the time of the use of iron in ancient Chinese forward by hundreds of years.
Later, in order not to let this set of chimes be lost, Ma Chengyuan, with the help of his friend Zhang Guangyu, spent a lot of money to buy this set of chimes, and stored them in the Shanghai Museum, and studied the inscriptions engraved on them.
After research, experts found that this set of chimes recorded a major event in the Jin state during the Western Zhou Dynasty, saying that the monarch of the Western Zhou Dynasty, King Li of Zhou, ordered the Marquis of Jin to go to Shandong to fight one
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The tribe of Suiyi was very happy after the victory was won, so the celebrity cast a set of chimes to reward the Marquis of Jin, that is, this set of chimes.
Although the origin of the chimes and the recorded events are clear, experts have found that the chimes are incomplete, because the event has fewer endings, which also shows that there are more than 14 chimes in this set.
Although it was all about studying history, the auction house refused to disclose the seller's information because it was their professional principle, so the clue was broken.
The specific origin of this set of chimes has to start from a few months ago, when there was a person named Hou Linshan in Quwo County, Shanxi, the family originally lived by farming, but I don't know why, he suddenly became rich and became a millionaire, you know, in the early 90s, ten thousand yuan households were already very rich, let alone millions.
Hou Linshan's sudden wealth attracted the attention of Chen Zhanshan, the director of the Public Security Bureau, because he knew that only by improper means could he obtain so much wealth in a short period of time, so Chen Zhanshan arranged for someone to secretly investigate Hou Linshan.
This investigation really made him find out something, it turned out that there was a group of long-term residents in the hotel opened by Hou Linshan, this group of residents all lived by stealing tombs, and the boss of their gang was the boss Hou Linshan.
After the public security comrades grasped the clues, they hunted down all the tomb robbers, and according to their confessions, they found their next tomb to be stolen in Beizhao Village outside the county town.
Chen Zhanshan, director of the Public Security Bureau, reported the news to the Shanxi Provincial Cultural Relics Bureau, which immediately organized personnel to explore the ancient tomb. Unfortunately, this tomb has been stolen by other tomb robbers.
Although the specifications of this set of Western Zhou And Jin Hou Su bells are not as good as the Zeng Hou Yi chimes unearthed in Suizhou, Hubei, the value of this set of chimes is not inferior, because the discovery of this set of chimes directly pushed the time when humans mastered iron smelting technology in ancient times by 500 years! And it also filled the historical gap of the Jin dynasty during the Western Zhou Dynasty!
However, it is a pity that although this set of chimes was found, it was not completed and was stored in the Shanghai Museum and Shanxi Museum. In 2002, in order to protect precious cultural relics from being exiled abroad, the State Administration of Cultural Heritage specially issued the "Catalogue of the First Batch of Cultural Relics Prohibited from Exhibiting Abroad", and this set of Western Zhou And Jin Marquis Su Zhong was also included.
Although this set of chimes has not been together so far, I believe that in the future, these 16 chimes will definitely have a day when they are combined.