湖北省博物馆英文导游辞

Hubei Provincince Museum

Now, in front of us The building with red wall and green tile is the hubei province museum.A lot of relics were unearthed from the famous ancient tomb of Marquis Yi of Zeng state are exhibited here.

This is an exhibition for a tomb more than 2,400 years ago in ancient China.In the summer of 1978, Hubei Provincial archaeologists excavated a huge tomb in Suizhou County. Suizhou County lies in about 155 km northwest of Wuhan City in north-central Hubei Province.

This tomb belonged to Marquis Yi of Zeng state. Marquis Yi was a host of a lesser state during the Warring States period of the Eastern Zhou dynasty.How to know the name of the owner and the date of the tomb?As for the name of owner: A number of the objects were unearthed from the tomb carry inscriptions. Most inscriptions record a same name, that is “Marquis Yi of Zeng”. For example, on a bronze vessel wrote “Made by Marquis Yi of Zeng state for his eternal use‟; on some weapons wrote “Halberds used by Marquis Yi‟s guards”; “Long pike of Marquis Yi”. It shows that most objects of this tomb belong to Marquis Yi of Zeng state, namely the owner of this tomb.

As for the date of tomb: In the center position of the Chime Bells, there is a Bo bell which carries a thirty-one characters inscription. The inscription states that this Bo Bell was presented by King Hui of Chu state as a gift to Marquis Yi of Zeng state, the Chu‟s neighboring state, in the 56th year of the reign of King Hui. This date corresponds to 433 BC. According to this fact, it can be concluded that the date of this bomb is about 2400 years ago.

More than 15,000 relics were excavated from this tomb, including bronze ritual vessels, musical instruments, gold and jade decorative items, lacquered utensils and inscribed bamboo slips.

This is a model of chamber. The shape of the tomb is unregular polygon. The tomb is 21 m long from east to west and 16.5 m wide form north to south, with 11 m deep from the current mouth to the bottom. The whole area of the tomb is 220 ㎡. This is a fairly large tomb of the same types.

The tomb is composed of four chambers of different size, namely the eastern chamber, the central chamber, the western chamber and the northern chamber.

All of the coffins are in the eastern and western chambers. The owner‟s coffin and 8 attendant coffins and one dog attendant coffin are in the eastern chamber. Another 13 attendant coffins are in the western chamber. These 21 sacrificed attendants are female maids or performers. Among them, the oldest one was about 25 years old and the youngest one was about 13 years old. It is supposed that they were killed by poison.

The central chamber is the largest one, a lot of bronze ritual vessels and the famous Chime Bells were excavated from here. These musical instruments were arranged in perfect order as if the tomb was an ancient concert hall.

Altogether more than 4,700 pieces of weapons placed in piles were found in northern chamber, which is just like a weapon-store room.

This is a bronze crane--like figure with deer antlers. The sculpture is an imaginary auspicious creature. It consists of deer‟s antler, crane‟s body and bird‟s feet. It bears both the symbolic of luckiness and goodwill of deer and longevity of crane. When excavated, it was place d near the owner‟s coffin, acting as a guard for the dead body, or carrying the soul to the heaven.

This is a set of ritual vessels named 9 Ding and 8 Gui.Whereas Ding was the ritual vessel for boiling meat and fish, Gui served as a container for filling grain. Ding and Gui arrangement is a set of important ritual vessel in ancient China. At that time only the king and the noble had the right to use Ding and Gui arrangement. The number in each set indicated the rank of their owner. For example, only t he kings had the right to use …9 Ding and 8 Gui‟ arrangement, dukes and princes were only