Tsinghua bamboo slips enter Tibet

On July 5th, 2008, plastic boxes filled with bamboo slips arrived in Tsinghua University through customs. As soon as it was opened, everyone smelled a pungent smell of chemicals. According to reports, in the process of bamboo slips circulating overseas, the holders probably used bamboo pieces to support them in order to sell them at a better price, but the bamboo pieces they used were not disinfected and moldy. After that, the experts washed away the mildew spots with the smallest and softest brush and soaked the bamboo slips in sterile distilled water. With the support of the school, a constant temperature and humidity preservation room was built for bamboo slips.

From June 65438+June 654381October+April 2008, the expert panel composed of 1 1 concluded that the bamboo slips were dated to the middle and late Warring States period, and the contents were mostly unprecedented historical books.

In order to prove this assertion, at the end of 2008, Peking University Accelerator Quality Laboratory and Quaternary Dating Laboratory conducted AMS carbon dating for 14 years on these bamboo slips. After tree ring correction, the data obtained is 305 BC plus or minus 30 years, that is, the middle and late Warring States period, which is basically consistent with the results observed in ancient philology. In addition, experts also asked Tsinghua University Analysis Center to measure the moisture content of bamboo slips, and the result was 400%, which was only the result after being soaked in water for thousands of years. Modern people can't do this.

Li Xueqin said: "Let's make a bold guess. If these bamboo slips are from Hubei, they were made before Bai Qi cut Chu (278 BC). " After taking photos, the experts projected Jane's digital photos onto the wall and tried to look at them one by one. There are two inevitable problems in this way of reading. One is that these bamboo slips have been scattered for a long time, most of them have lost their original order, and the broken ones have not been pieced together. The other is the Warring States characters on bamboo slips, which have been lost for a long time, and there are many obstacles to interpretation.

However, just like playing a jigsaw puzzle, experts comprehensively analyzed all kinds of information according to the length of bamboo slips, the position, layout, font and character spacing and the content of bamboo slips, and finally found at least 63 books in bamboo slips. Since September 2009, experts have interpreted these nine articles respectively. Every week, they hold two or three seminars in the institute to report and discuss the results. "This is a dazzling thing," Liu Guozhong said. "The contents contained in these bamboo slips are beyond imagination, and even the calligraphy on them is pleasing to the eye." Work has become a pleasure.