A glimpse of a thousand-year reunion


　　The warehouse of Sanxingdui Museum is located in the work area of ​​the Cultural Relics Protection and Restoration Museum.

"Since the CCTV live broadcast last month, the number of tourists has doubled," said Yu Jian, director of the Sanxingdui Museum's Cultural Relics Preservation Department. It was close to tens of thousands on weekends.”

　　From June 14th to 16th, the last round of live broadcast of the new excavation results of the six sacrificial pits at the Sanxingdui site was successfully completed, and the last day set off a small climax: the newly unearthed statue of the snake-body god in pit 8 and the 1986 The remnants of the bronze bird-footed figure unearthed in Pit 2 were successfully matched, and they were reunited after more than 3,000 years, and were renamed as "bird-footed figure with a bowed body and a top statue".

This is also the first time 36 years after the excavation of Sanxingdui Pit No. 1 and No. 2 in 1986.

　　When I saw this magical object with my own eyes, it was lying quietly on a movable flatbed car in the warehouse, and temporarily returned to its previous "separated" state - only the human figure and bird's feet were lying together, and the gods The scorpion that was supported by the bottom of the human hand was wrapped in a transparent film and placed in another place, waiting to continue to be repaired.

　　The thousand-year reunion in the live broadcast is just a glimpse. To "stay together" in the future, further work is required by experts in the protection and restoration of cultural relics.

origin

　　The origin of that "stunning glimpse" still makes Yu Jian excited in retrospect.

　　He said that the stitching was not pre-rehearsed before the live broadcast, but "a flash of inspiration", which can also be said to be a surprising "emergency".

　　"After the live broadcast, there were indeed many people who came to ask, there are colleagues and leaders, and some even said that they had found it a month ago?" Yu Jian said, "It's really not, it's not that exaggerated."

　　During the three-day live broadcast, the focus was on the newly unearthed artifacts in Pit 7 and Pit 8. The content included both on-site extraction and interpretation by experts, as well as some preliminary clean-up work by Yu Jian and his colleagues. exhibit.

　　On June 15, the live broadcast went on to the second day. The important cultural relic, which was temporarily called "the top statue of the god standing upside down", had come out of the pit. When it was in the pit, it was broken into two parts, and one part was The upper body of the portrait and the slender goblet-shaped statue on top of his head, the other part is the scorpion supported by the hands and hands.

　　"From the very beginning, we wanted to put these two utensils, no matter what method, whether lying down or standing up, and wanting them to present a relatively complete combination in the live broadcast." Yu Jian said, "But After extracting it later, I found that it is very heavy, especially the goblet-shaped statue is filled with soil, and it is impossible to clean it all in a short time, so it may not be possible to fix it vertically - the overweight top statue, the portrait below Can not bear."

　　The top person is an important "role" in the live broadcast that day.

Before the live broadcast, Yu Jian and his younger brother Guo Jianbo, a librarian of the Cultural Protection Center of the Sichuan Provincial Institute of Cultural Relics and Archaeology, took a closer look at the artifact.

"At that time, the main thing I wanted to see was the pot below, because it was corroded very badly, which is rare in the bronzes unearthed in Sanxingdui. So we have been discussing at the beginning, what is the rust condition? How to do some simple non-destructive analysis, see how to repair it later, etc.”

　　As they chatted, they looked at this peculiar figure with no lower body and protruding fangs.

"At this time, Guo Jianbo asked: Is there any (artifact) in the museum that does not have an upper body?"

idea

　　Yu Jian turned on the "retrieval mode" in his mind, and a thought lit up in his mind like lightning.

　　This bird's foot portrait without the upper body is not "no one" in the Sanxingdui Museum - it occupies an independent exhibition cabinet.

Guo Jianbo also thought of it for the first time.

　　According to Yu Jian, the Sanxingdui Museum currently has 1,100 cultural relics in its collection, 489 of which are on display in the exhibition hall. Except for pottery, gold and jade, bronze ware accounts for about 40%, which is less than 200 pieces. It's far from "finding a needle in a haystack".

What's more, since he came to the museum in 2004, his initial job was to sort out the pictures and materials of the cultural relics in the collection. It is no exaggeration to use the accumulation of 18 years to describe his familiarity with the cultural relics in the museum.

　　As soon as the idea flashed, both he and Guo Jianbo became excited.

Because of the management requirements of the live broadcast, they couldn't go to the museum to see the real thing immediately, so they used their mobile phones to find pictures of bird feet and compare them.

　　"First of all, we compared the pattern on the legs of the bird's feet and the pattern on the skirt. Although the mobile phone photos are not clear enough, we can be sure that there is a certain connection with the pattern on the jacket worn by the top goddess." Yu Jian said, "The most obvious point is that the figure has a soft-line diamond shape (near the shoulders), which is a bit like an eye shaper. This pattern is also found on the legs of the bird's foot figure, which is the same. "

　　Second, they invariably thought: The end of the human bird's foot is the shape of a bird's curved and tapered tail feathers, which means that this part is not enough to support the "legs", so it can only be used in this inverted form. , to be able to display it fully.

Flatten

　　The more I thought about it, the more reliable I became, the more excited I became. "All the archaeologists in the closed loop came to see the pictures at that time, and everyone was very excited." Yu Jian recalled, "Then the CCTV staff learned about the situation and immediately decided to Use this as the climax and highlight of day three and the end."

　　All kinds of communication and requests began to appear, and one call after another was made from different people's mobile phones.

Tang Fei, director of the Sichuan Provincial Institute of Cultural Relics and Archaeology, said after learning about the incident: This is a big deal, and we must go to verify it immediately!

　　Proving means doing real artifact assembly.

At 3:44 pm on June 15th, Yu Jian reported the incident to Zhu Yarong, deputy director of the Sanxingdui Museum. With her consent, the staff of the museum exhibition hall took the actual bird's foot out of the display cabinet and sent it to the cultural relics. Restoration Museum (Note: Sanxingdui Museum will be closed during the live broadcast, and there will be no audience in the Museum).

　　After 4 pm, the moment when this historic scene was born, all the people present gathered around the workbench and waited eagerly.

　　Yu Jian felt his hands trembling slightly.

When he gently brought the hollow cylindrical figure with bird's feet to the waist of the curved snake figure, the stone in his heart fell to the ground.

"When we do it right, we first look at the stubble at the fracture, and the stubble of these two utensils is almost 90% or more in agreement, and it can correspond to 360 degrees."

　　In addition, in addition to the echoes of the decorative patterns he mentioned earlier, when the two utensils were originally cast, there were matching lines.

"The entire model line of this artifact is divided into two parts - the body part and the back part, and the model lines of these two parts can also be spliced ​​together, so it is obvious: this is opened from a mold. "Yu Jian said, "So we basically determined that this is the same utensil through the three channels of stubble, pattern and line."

　　Some experts also raised questions: The bird that the bird-footed man stepped on should not have its tail turned up to the sky, because when a bird is flying, it cannot fly head-down.

But soon everyone "thinks about it" - the "common sense" in the eyes of ancient Shu people and the "common sense" in the eyes of modern people can of course be very different. Artifacts have shocked us many times, and it is no surprise to do it again.

"Makeup"

　　The next step is to report the new discovery to the Provincial Bureau of Cultural Relics to see if it can be announced on the next day's live broadcast.

While these processes were going on, the initial piecing map had quickly spread among the live broadcast work group and relevant experts.

　　"That night, for this matter, the Tang Academy specially gathered all our archaeologists and cultural preservation and restoration personnel for a meeting. In the end, everyone felt that since this photo has been released, and there is a solid basis, it can be made The audience has a deeper understanding and a deeper impression of the new round of excavations at Sanxingdui, so they can simply publicize it generously and earnestly." Yu Jian said.

　　After the meeting, together with Guo Hanzhong, a senior cultural relic restorer at Sanxingdui Museum, and Lu Haizi from the Cultural Protection Center of the Sichuan Provincial Institute of Cultural Relics and Archaeology, he spent nearly 2 hours shooting the high-definition "fixing makeup" for the statue According to".

　　The top deity statue against the black flannel background looks like a standing posture, full of energy. The figure's original bowed body posture is more magical and agile because of the blessing of the light bird tail. In Yu Jian's words, it is described as "no sense of disobedience and harmony" , peculiar and beautiful. The ancient Shu people are really imaginative about the shape of these utensils."

　　In fact, these objects are all "lying", and were photographed by Lu Haizi climbing up a high ladder.

As mentioned earlier, the mud-filled goblets and figures were too heavy for the broken wrists to support.

repair

　　The following story, the viewers who have watched the live broadcast will know.

Many netizens sighed with emotion: "All the bronzes unearthed in 1986 have been taken off the list, but you are still alone in front of the screen..."

　　But in fact, the days after men and women "get off the single" are the real test of life.

This important cultural relic, which is gorgeously "off the list" and stunning the world in front of the live broadcast camera, has just embarked on a difficult and long road to restoration.

　　Through the transparent film, Yu Jian pointed at the rust on the bottom of the large bamboo stick, "This is a rare and serious type of bronze utensils unearthed in Sanxingdui. Some parts have been pulverized and are very unstable. , maybe if you scrape it a little harder, the metal on the outermost layer of the utensil will fall off with this powder."

　　For these rusted bronzes, the cultural conservation and restoration experts currently mainly adopt the method of surface sealing and reinforcement to isolate the moisture in the air.

"Now look at this bronze scorpion, some of the gray-white rust on the surface has slowly turned into light yellow-green rust. As long as it is not kept in a humid environment, its rust will basically have little effect on the utensils. Yes, it is different from harmful rust." Yu Jian said.

　　This makes people feel that these sacrificial weapons that used to carry the ancient Shu people's devout respect to their ancestors and God more than 3,000 years ago seem to be alive in a sense, and they are being carefully protected and restored by experts. Slowly regain the aura and vitality of the past.

　　Chengdu Business Daily-Red Star News reporter Qiao Xueyang intern Wu Yifan