Starting My Treasure Hunting In England

According to common sense, opening the box without any written information on it and looking at the possible contents inside is helpful to identify the overall information of the box.

So Liang En quickly reached an agreement with Dr. John on how to deal with the white porcelain box, and went directly to the professional trailer to clean it up while sending people to guard the excavation site.

"Let me see what you are." Because he recently got a good harvest on the card, when Dr. John was getting something in the car, Liang En used a [Appraisal (N)] on the box. 】.

[When modern people talk about the ceramics of the Tang Dynasty, they will think of the colorful Tang Sancai. But in fact, in the Tang Dynasty, Tang Sancai was a high-end funerary object used for burials. The government at that time even clearly stipulated how many objects could be buried by certain people.

However, for this reason, the uses of Tang Sancai were very fixed at that time. At least for the living people of the Tang Dynasty, they would never use any Tang Sancai utensils in their lives.

Therefore, the daily porcelain used by people in the Tang Dynasty showed a trend of southern blue and northern white, that is, the south used celadon mainly from Longquan kiln, while the north used white porcelain mainly from Xing kiln and Ding kiln.

The current Ding Kiln white glaze box was produced during the reign of Emperor Xianzong of the Tang Dynasty. It then passed through several hands along the coastline along the Maritime Silk Road, and then arrived in Europe, where it finally became the most precious treasure of a female Viking warrior. 】

"Is this a Ding kiln box?" After reading the contents of the card appraisal report, Liang En looked at the porcelain box carefully. Although he didn't know much about Chinese cultural relics, he also knew that it developed from the Xing kiln. Ding kiln is one of the five famous kilns in the Song Dynasty.

Although the Ding Kiln in the Tang Dynasty was a private kiln rather than an official kiln, judging from the exquisiteness of this box, it is not difficult to see why this thing was regarded as an official kiln to fire porcelain for the royal family in the Song Dynasty.

And the moment the porcelain box was discovered, Liang En also got a new card.

[Map of the Maritime Silk Road (R): With the development of technology and the loss of control of the Western Regions by the Central Plains Dynasty and internal chaos after the Anshi Rebellion, the land Silk Road gradually fell into disuse.

But at the same time, a Maritime Silk Road was gradually established, taking on the task of communication between the East and the West, allowing the circulation of people, goods and information between Europe and Asia.

Skill card (permanent), the user can open this map in the soul at any time, which records some of the maritime routes of the entire Maritime Silk Road. 】

"Let's get started." Dr. John quickly organized a countertop, then put the box on the countertop and started cleaning it with special tools.

Under the light, what was initially cleaned up was just some black soil, but after pouring out most of the box, some small gray lumps appeared in the box.

These gray lumps are located at the bottom of the box and are firmly adhered to the glaze of the white porcelain box. They are obviously not penetrated from the outside world, but are things that originally existed in the box.

"Do you know how to use the experimental equipment over there?" After placing several gray lumps the size of mung beans in a glass dish, Dr. John asked Liang En behind without raising his head.

"I know how to use it. After all, I graduated with a major in archeology. When I was an intern, I often helped the professor analyze the composition of some items, so I can use these instruments." Liang En said, taking the glass dish and placing it next to an instrument. It was tested.

Half an hour later, he confirmed one thing through various means, that is, the gray agglomerated powder was some dangerous compounds, which contained a large amount of lead and arsenic, as well as some completely rotten and carbonized fat and starch left behind. Mark of.

In addition, there are some broken plant remains in this pile, but because those plants have been complicatedly processed, it is impossible to tell which plants they are.

Fortunately, the things that have been confirmed now are enough to deduce what was originally contained in the box: the ingredients are completely consistent with the historical ingredients of medieval cosmetics.

Yes, European medieval cosmetics do not look like cosmetics to modern people, but like poisons. Because they add a lot of toxic ingredients in many cosmetics, such as lead, mercury and arsenic.

In fact, it’s not that they didn’t have natural cosmetics. For example, in a 13th-century manuscript, there is a record of using very fine wheat flour mixed with rose water to apply on the face for maintenance.

It is a pity that even if the various natural ingredients extracted with today's technology are to be effective quickly, let alone the rough extraction methods in the Middle Ages, the medieval nobles quickly developed the method of using heavy metals as Lord's cosmetics.

The whitening effect of these cosmetics is unusually fast, even comparable to some top modern cosmetics in this regard, but the price is equally astonishing.

It is well known to modern people that these heavy metals and toxic substances mixed on the face can be absorbed into the human body, and then cause various toxic reactions in the human body, such as irritability, loss of appetite, organ failure, osteoporosis, etc.

There are even victims who have never used cosmetics. For example, "Aka ToffaNa" is an arsenic-containing face powder named after its inventor, Mrs. Signora Toffana. It is specially designed for women from wealthy families.

Its instructions for use explicitly tell women not to ingest the product, but encourage them to apply it to their cheeks in the presence of their husbands.

So after kissing their wives on the cheek, more than six hundred husbands died in just one month, leaving behind many wealthy widows. The incident ultimately led to the execution of Madame Toffana - known as the original "fatal woman" of the Middle Ages.

Of course, there are more extreme beauty practices. For example, the legendary Countess Elizabeth Bathory, the famous "Bloody Countess", invented a method of drinking blood to whiten and anti-aging, but this is based on Based on the murder of 650 people.

Judging from the many examples above, everyone has a love for beauty, even a female warrior who has made great achievements on the battlefield.

That's why the deceased would use oriental porcelain, which was very precious at the time, to store these cosmetics, and put the cosmetics next to himself when he was buried, preparing to use them when he entered another world.

Just when Liang En collected a lot of information, Dr. John also cleaned the box, but found nothing of value except the remains of the cosmetics.

After all, during the Tang Dynasty, people were not accustomed to marking porcelain with year marks as in later dynasties, so it is not easy to find enough information from the porcelain itself.

"I think we may need collaborative help from museums in China." Dr. John said suddenly after Liang En completed the laboratory work and submitted a laboratory order number.

"I hope they can send professionals to identify the specific age of this porcelain box, because if we can figure out the specific age of this box, it will be very helpful for us to determine the specific age of this cemetery."

"Indeed, it is a very complicated matter for people without special training to identify the specific conditions of these things."

"There are professionals in China who are able to shorten the manufacturing date of this box to just a few decades after identification, which is very helpful for our next research."

After making the decision to ask for help, Liang En and the others immediately started calling people related to the Chinese Museum. After just a few calls, Liang En got an unexpected tip from the Chinese Embassy in Ireland. outside support.