■ In mid-June of this year, in the last large-scale live broadcast of the Sanxingdui site, although the pig-nosed dragon-head cylindrical vessel in Pit No. 8 was not extracted, it was already above the layer of artifacts at that time, standing in front of the camera imposingly.
■ After the live broadcast, after more than a month of busy work, after extracting "a lot" of heads of bronze figures, at 3:00 pm on August 4th, this eye-catching artifact was finally officially lifted out of Pit No. 8 , and more details are also displayed more clearly. Among them, under the wide "pig nose" of the head of the utensil, the dense teeth in the relatively unremarkable mouth are very special: it is the Sanxingdui sacrificial pit that used to have many teeth. There are found "Yazhang" forms.
The "big dragon" with a length of 1.2 meters came out of the pit
lost left ear
This pig-nosed dragon is 1.2 meters long, 38 centimeters high, 20 centimeters wide (between the eyes), and 12 centimeters wide.
The dragon's head has a broad nose, a long ear on the right, and a single horn in the middle of the forehead. The body is evenly distributed with scale patterns and a series of feather-like patterns. The shape is peculiar and elegant.
Zhao Hao, the person in charge of Pit No. 8 and an associate professor at Peking University's School of Archaeology and Museology, introduced in an interview with reporters at the scene: "This artifact has been exposed relatively completely in the pit before, but it has been a long time whether its left ear still exists. judge.
"Because at the beginning, between the left ear and the right ear, that is, the position of the head, there was a bronze human head pierced in and pressed on it. We first lifted the human head away, and then came up with this dragon head cylindrical device. , is afraid that its left ear will be crushed by something above."
What surprised them was that the broken left ear was not seen in pit No. 8. Maybe it was not broken in the pit later, but was first broken and thrown into other pits.
After the "big dragon" came out of the pit, the archaeological team members at the scene surrounded the long wooden box that contained it, and while examining it carefully, there were many discussions.
Zhao Hao said that the appearance of this utensil is obviously not a direct reproduction of a real animal. It is probably an imaginary object created by the ancient Shu people using a variety of animal images, and it is exaggerated and deformed.
"As far as I know, there is no ancient document that mentions the existence of crocodiles in Sichuan more than 3,000 years ago, and if it looks like a crocodile, then the crocodile has a long snout instead of a nose. The head of this dragon-shaped column is under the nose. And there are mouths."
Under the big nose is the small mouth
mouth full of teeth
The most interesting secret is hidden in the mouth that cannot be seen in this picture: they found a lot of tiny "teeth" in the mouth of the faucet columnar, and its shape is exactly the shape of the teeth in Sanxingdui.
Zhao Hao told reporters that a batch of bronze small standing men unearthed before were decorated with such Yazhang, and the dragon-shaped artifacts unearthed in Pit 7 also had Yazhang on their heads.
"This discovery also subverts our previous concept - we used to think that there is only one way of using the yazhang. At present, it seems that the pattern of its appearance is not single, it may be used by people, or it may be used as a kind of clothes on clothes. Ornament, or even sculpting on other objects as decoration, is possible."
What is Yazhang?
What is the meaning?
Xiang Ming, director of the Zhejiang Provincial Institute of Cultural Relics and Archaeology, told reporters that he believes that the "tooth" of Yazhang may mean the "bud" or "bud, stamen" of a plant.
The buds and buds signify spring and new life, as well as the dynamism of nature.
"Look carefully at the shape of the flower buds on the Sanxingdui sacred tree. If you think of it as a plane, its shape is very similar to Yazhang." Fang Ming said, "The sacred tree is alive, with flowers and birds on its branches. In 1986, Sanxingdui 2 On the two great sacred trees unearthed in the pit, the birds standing on the flowers are very eye-catching, and the flowers may be Yazhang."
In the uninhibited imagination of the ancient Shu people, "flower buds" and "tender shoots" can not only bloom on the sky-high sacred tree, but also grow into the mouth of the "sacred dragon". The excavation of the columnar vessel adds a touch of fantasy.
full of pit man avatar
Only half of it has been extracted
In addition to the pig-nosed dragon head column, a round statue was also extracted from pit No. 8 on the 4th.
"This kind of Yuanzun is a relatively common type of artifacts in Sanxingdui." Zhao Hao said, "At least four Yuankou Yuanzun have been found in Pit No. 8, and the second one was extracted on the 4th." Reporter It was seen at the scene that the interior of the Yuanzun had been filled with ivory slag and soil. According to the situation in the bronze scorpion of the bronze statue extracted before, it is very likely that seashells and jade wares are also inside the zun, and the specific situation has to wait for cultural protection. Experts further clean up.
What new utensils will be "queued up" waiting to come out of the pit in the next step?
According to Zhao Hao, in the past month or so, a number of large bronze statues, bronze pots and more than 20 bronze figures have been extracted from Pit No. 8.
"There are a lot of headshots in pit No. 8, there are about 70 in total, which means that there are still more than 50 headshots scattered in the pit waiting to be extracted."
The reporter saw at the scene: the big-mouthed beast that was called "robot dog" by netizens and analyzed by experts as a "flying elephant", which had attracted much attention before, although the body was completely exposed, but because of its ears. There are still many artifacts under pressure, and it is estimated that it will not be able to "fly out" of Pit 8 until the end of August.