The right or wrong of this fake exhibition is still under debate. However, it is not uncommon for a national treasure to be regarded as a fake and even escape the eyes of many experts in the industry. The treasure of Shanghai Museum's town hall "After the Jin Dynasty, Suzhong" is a classic case. This bronze heavy weapon with a history of nearly 3,000 years was selected into the first batch of national exhibition catalogue prohibited from going abroad in 2002, and the price was only HK$ 6,543,800+when it was collected by Shanghai Museum.
1992, a set of 14 bronze chimes appeared in the Hong Kong cultural relics market. The inscription on the chime is chiseled, which is very rare. Local museums and collectors think it is suspected of forgery, so they dare not sell it easily, and they can't find a buyer after a long delay. Two years later, photos and inscriptions reached Shanghai. Ma Chengyuan, then the curator of Shanghai Museum, judged from the photo information that it was genuine and decided to invest in it. "
I'll discuss it with my colleagues. This clock is a great thing. We have to send it back quickly. "Ma Chengyuan said," I immediately told this antique shop in Hong Kong that you should not show this 14 clock to others because we have already seen it. Antique shops have this rule. After showing it to others, if you don't want it, you can only show it to the second person. "
As Hong Kong had not returned to China at that time, it would take several months to go through the formalities for going to Hong Kong. Ma Chengyuan was afraid that things would change over time, so he entrusted Zhang Guangyu, a professor at the Chinese University of Hong Kong, to negotiate with the seller. At that time, the seller did not know the true value of the chime and was eager to sell it. In the end, he only sold them at a low price of 1 10,000 Hong Kong dollars. If the other party verifies the authenticity of this cultural relic, this price can't even buy the smallest chime. Ma Chengyuan recalled: "At that time, I probably sent 12 boxes, put them in big boxes and put them in the Shanghai Museum to open. This is indeed the early chime of the Duke of Jin's tomb. "
Stolen cultural relics from Kuching site
What is the great cultural relic that makes Ma Chengyuan look so high and buy it on the basis of photos? This should start with what he said about the tomb of the marquis of Jin. As one of the countries that were enfeoffed in the Western Zhou Dynasty, the history of Jin State has been foggy for a long time. In the early years of the Western Zhou Dynasty, after the death of Ji Fa, the king of Wu, Wu Geng, the son of Shang Zhouwang, led the Yin Shang patriarch to revolt, and Zhou Gongdan helped the young Zhou Chengwang to quell the rebellion. According to Lu's Spring and Autumn Annals, once a young man played with his younger brother, picked up a tung leaf, cut it into a jade shape, and said, "I use this to make you a vassal." Historians quickly took notes and told the duke of Zhou. Duke Zhou immediately came to congratulate him, and Wang Cheng explained, "I was joking." Duke Zhou replied seriously: "The son of heaven is not joking."
Soon, he fulfilled his promise and sealed it to a place called Tang. Yu Shu, together with the local people, reclaimed wasteland, developed economy and gradually became stronger. After his death, his son Xie's father inherited the throne and changed his name to Jin Hou. During the Spring and Autumn Period, with the painstaking efforts of the descendants, the State of Jin became the leader of the northern vassal states at that time, dominating for a while until the three clans were divided into the State of Jin in 369 BC.
Liu Zongyuan, a writer in the Tang Dynasty, once questioned this record in Lv Chunqiu. He thought that if Wang Cheng's younger brother was blocked, the Duke of Zhou would tell Wang Cheng in time, instead of waiting for him to make a joke and then taking the opportunity to promote it. If a king plays a joke on tung leaves open his concubines and eunuchs, will the duke of Zhou also take the opportunity to play tricks on him? Duke Zhou will guide the king's behavior with appropriate principles, and will not be smart enough to cater to his mistakes and defend him. This record in ancient books is not credible.
Not only was Dong Ye's brother questioned by later generations, but Yu Shu's fief "Tang Kingdom", that is, where was the first fief of the Jin Dynasty, has always been a mystery. Historians have done a lot of research on this, but there has been no recognized conclusion. Academic circles support two schools of thought: Ban Gu, a Han historian, thinks that "Tang" is near Taiyuan today; Gu, a great scholar in Qing Dynasty, confirmed that "Tang" should be in the south of Shaanxi.
At the end of 1970s, Zou Heng, a professor of Peking University Archaeology Department, led students to Shanxi to do cultural relics investigation, trying to find the first feudal Tang Dynasty in Jin State. At first, he followed Ban Gu's statement and came to Taiyuan first, and found that the earliest unearthed cultural relics were only from the Spring and Autumn Period. At this time, the so-called "Shuyu Tomb" excavated by Shanxi Archaeological Team was just a fake tomb built after the Tang and Song Dynasties. Zou Heng was disappointed and came to the south of Fenhe River, which Gu said, but it was also in vain.
Zou Heng returned to Beijing, carefully searched the vast amount of historical materials, and decided to focus on Linfen, Shanxi today. Since the archaeological expert Xie discovered the Tianma site in Qucun in the 1960s, the local authorities have been exploring the site. 1979, Zou Heng took the students to Shanxi again. This time, they chose Tianma Village and Qucun Village, which are located at the junction of Shanxi and Hebei. With the deepening of archaeological excavation, Zou Heng felt more and more that this ugly mountain village would become an important site of the ancient Jin State. He asked the students to dig a trench, but found nothing important. At this time, the Spring Festival is approaching, and the weather is too cold. He agreed to let the students go home for the New Year and stay and continue to look for it. Unexpectedly, a group of Shanxi cultural relics dealers have been following the archaeological team, taking advantage of the opportunity of the archaeological team to choose the excavation site to go home for the New Year, using explosives to carry out destructive grave robbery and steal a lot of heavy objects.
Archaeologists didn't know at that time that it was this grave robbery that made a batch of bronze chimes (14 pieces) buried here quietly transported out of Shanxi to Hong Kong more than 2,000 kilometers away. Many years later, this group of national treasures was collected by experts at the Shanghai World Expo, that is, this set of returned cultural relics purchased by Ma Chengyuan from Hong Kong.
In the same year that the Shanghai Museum collected the chimes of Jin Hou's tomb, Peking University Archaeological Department and Shanxi Archaeological Research Institute conducted a rescue excavation of Qucun-Tianma site after the excavation, and nineteen Jin Hou's tombs were discovered one after another, which shocked the historians. According to archaeological findings, this is the beginning of the fief of the ancient state of Jin, which was "promoted by martial law, based on martial law and ruled by literati".
The basis of forgery: the mystery of knife carving
Just as archaeologists were carrying out a rescue excavation of the Qucun-Tianma site, two small clocks were unearthed from a tomb of the marquis of Jin here. The inscription on the clock is also chiseled out, which is exactly the same as the 14 chime in the Shanghai World Expo collection. These two chimes, which were missed when stolen by grave robbers, are a complete set with Shanghai Bo's 14 chimes, which further proves the orthodox identity of Shanghai Bo Su Zhong. Hou Suzhong in Jin Dynasty was originally mistaken as a fake in the industry, which originated from the inscription carved by this knife. In order to obtain clear music, the bells in pre-Qin dynasty were made of pure high-tin bronze. Gao Xiqing copper is hard, and the Yin, Shang and Western Zhou Dynasties lacked perfect steel chisel tools, so the inscriptions were all cast. Even at the end of the bronze age at the turn of the Spring and Autumn Period and the Warring States Period, steel tools appeared, and most of the inscriptions were cast.
The inscriptions carved by Su Zhong in the Jin Dynasty are very neat, and the words carved by each clock are different. The last two minutes are two lines of 1 1 characters. Inscriptions are all carved with sharp tools. Because of the hardness of the clock, it is impossible to do it overnight. You need to chisel out points first, and then connect them into a line. Often a painting takes four or five knives to become a whole, and the knife marks are very obvious.