Starting My Treasure Hunting In England

"You're saying that a Tang Dynasty Ding kiln porcelain burial object was found in a cemetery of ancient female Viking warriors?" came the somewhat excited voice of a Chinese embassy staff member on the phone.

"If this is the case, you can ask the person in charge of the archaeological site if they allow our media to enter the site for interviews. If so, a documentary shooting team will rush over soon, and there will be a porcelain identification expert in that team."

For the Chinese people, a well-preserved Ding Kiln white porcelain box is indeed precious, but it is just a precious piece of porcelain, and it is not irreplaceable.

But it is another thing to find this thing as a funerary object in a Viking cemetery, because it represents an ancient commercial route across Eurasia and the history of the connection between two countries at both ends of the continent. .

In other words, if this thing appeared in China, it would at most be one of the early porcelain produced by one of the five famous kilns, but what was dug out of the Viking warrior cemetery was a rare treasure.

"Documentary shooting team! Is this a bit of an overreaction?" After hearing what the embassy staff on the phone said, Liang En's eyes widened.

He knew that the discovery of this thing could prove that China and Ireland had at least indirect contact more than a thousand years ago, but he couldn't afford to send a special documentary shooting team over.

"Actually, the documentary shooting team was not specially sent for this matter." The staff member said. "They mainly came to Europe to shoot a documentary about the Silk Road."

"A few days ago, this team just finished shooting a story related to Gothenburg in Sweden, and is now preparing to shoot some cultural relics and materials related to Central Asia and the Silk Road in London."

"So if it can be confirmed that your current discovery is indeed true, then this team can just send some people over to take pictures of your discovery."

"Understood, I will ask Professor John and send you pictures of the scene." Liang En nodded and said, "If everything goes well, please inform this plan in advance."

Liang En didn't think there was anything wrong with the fact that he was picked up by the way, because it was well known that he could inform the embassy of the level of the documentary shooting team, and being able to join temporarily was already very impressive.

"It would be great if someone is willing to publicize this aspect, especially if the propagandist is from the national media." After hanging up the phone and telling Dr. John about this matter, Dr. John immediately expressed his agreement. .

"And compared to the British, the Chinese people don't know much about Ireland as they do. So I think we can take this opportunity to introduce us to the Chinese people through them."

Dr. John is not a pure scholar, but also a museum official, so he naturally thinks more about this aspect, and this kind of consideration is beneficial to everyone.

After obtaining the permission, Liang En immediately called the embassy and helped them communicate with the National Museum of Ireland.

Because both parties now hope to cooperate in this area, everyone quickly reached a cooperation agreement and set a specific timetable for the next actions.

It is not a particularly simple matter to add and shoot content temporarily, so even if the communication between the two parties is very smooth, it will not be until the end of December or the beginning of January for the other party to arrive.

But this was not a bad thing for Liang En and the others, because there was a large amount of organic matter in the tomb, so they took advantage of these few days to send some samples back to the laboratory at the National Museum in Dublin.

Because there were enough samples, they quickly completed the examination of these things and dated the cemetery to between 800 and 850 AD.

This is also thanks to the fact that the wood that the Vikings traditionally used to build cemeteries was cut fresh and contained the bones of the deceased, so they were able to pinpoint the specific age of these things so accurately.

As for the route that this Ding Kiln white porcelain box took to get here, everyone has a guess. A fragmented Byzantine-style blue glass cup found in the cemetery and several silver coins from Byzantium pointed out the most likely route. .

As the main transportation route between Asia and Europe, the Byzantine capital Constantinople gathered all kinds of things, from Viking mercenaries and merchants to all kinds of wealth from Europe, Asia and Africa.

For the Vikings who were frequent visitors to this city, if they saw any interesting gadgets, it was very reasonable to pay for them and take them back to their hometown.

At the same time, compared with other things, small and high-value items such as porcelain from the East are obviously very conducive to long-distance trafficking by the group of Vikings, and will naturally be listed as the first choice for material procurement by these people.

In addition to the Ding Kiln white porcelain box, the most valuable things they found from this cemetery were a small scale that was mostly rotten, but the scales could still be seen clearly, and five or six weights made of lead. code.

This kind of balance, which is only the size of a human forearm, is used to check the precious metal content in coins, because counterfeit coins were prevalent in that era, and the counterfeit coins mainly contained lead and tin, and the weight was not the same as the real coins. It can be identified with a balance and weights. come out.

However, this kind of exquisitely crafted balance is not a common item, and it is often only owned by businessmen with considerable wealth. In other words, the Viking woman in the tomb was not only a warrior, but also a merchant.

In fact, these two identities were not contradictory in ancient times. Considering that the security environment in ancient times was far more chaotic than it is now, it is not uncommon for a businessman to have powerful force.

But even so, the tomb owner should have been a leader in that era. Especially in that era of obvious gender discrimination, it was not easy for a woman to do this, so Liang En felt that the story here should be passed on.

Finally, when the entire tomb was almost cleaned, a filming team from China and several experts came to this place and started filming. However, the first problem they encountered was the language barrier.

Unlike Chinese, English does not have a so-called standard language, so even countries or regions that use English as their mother tongue or legal language may not be able to understand what the other party is saying.

Therefore, the English that this filming team mastered naturally had some problems when communicating with Irish people. Fortunately, Liang En was able to help them at this time and help them communicate with the staff.

"Excuse me, Teacher Liang." After Liang En helped them complete the communication, the embassy staff who accompanied the filming group thanked him, "We didn't expect the Irish accent here to be so strong."

The embassy often does not come into contact with many civilians, so it is natural that there will be various problems when dealing with ordinary staff.

"It's okay. After all, everyone wants to take this thing well, so it's natural to help each other." Liang En smiled and said, "If you need any help, please come to me. I will try my best to help. help."