Treasure hunt begins in England

Chapter 256 Documentary

"You mean that a burial object of Ding kiln porcelain from the Tang Dynasty was found in the cemetery of an ancient female Viking warrior?" A Chinese embassy staff member's excited voice came over 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 yes, a documentary filming team will rush over quickly, and there is a porcelain appraisal expert in that team."

For 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 that there is no substitute.

But it is another thing to find this thing in a Viking cemetery as a funeral object, because behind it represents an ancient commercial route across Eurasia, and the history of the connection between the 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 porcelains produced by one of the five famous kilns, but the ones dug out from the cemetery of Viking warriors are rare treasures.

"The documentary filming team! Is this an overreaction?" After hearing what the embassy staff said on the phone, 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 1000 years ago, but he should not be able to afford to send a documentary filming team here.

"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 you can confirm that your current discovery is indeed true, then this team can just send some people to take pictures of your discovery."

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

Liang En didn't think there was anything wrong with the fact that he was incidentally picked up here, because it was well known that he was able to inform the embassy's documentary filming team what level it was, and it was already very impressive to be able to join temporarily.

"It would be really great if someone would like to publicize this, especially if the propagandist is from the national media." After hanging up the phone and telling Dr. John about this, Dr. John immediately agreed .

"And compared to the British, the Chinese people's understanding of Ireland is far inferior to them. So I think we can use this opportunity to introduce us to the Chinese people through them."

Dr. John is not just a scholar, but also an official of the museum, 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 temporarily add and shoot content, so even if the communication between the two parties is very smooth, it will not be until the end of December and the beginning of January when the other party arrives.

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

Because there were enough samples, they quickly completed the inspection of these things and positioned the time of this cemetery between 800 and 850 AD.

This is also thanks to the fact that the wood traditionally used by the Vikings to build cemeteries is freshly chopped, plus the remains of the dead, so they were able to pinpoint the specific age of these things so accurately.

As for the route of the Dingyao white porcelain box, everyone has a guess. A broken Byzantine-style blue glass and several Byzantine silver coins found in the cemetery pointed out the most likely route. .

Constantinople, the capital of Byzantium, as the main traffic route between Asia and Europe, gathered all kinds of things, from Viking mercenaries, merchants to various wealth from Europe, Asia and Africa.

For the Vikings who are frequent visitors to this city, if they see any interesting gadgets, it is very reasonable to buy them and bring them back to their hometown.

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

Apart from the Dingyao white porcelain box, the most valuable thing they found from this cemetery was a small balance with five or six pieces of lead weights that was half rotten, but the scales and pans could still be seen clearly. code.

This kind of balance with 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 were mainly filled with lead and tin. come out.

However, this kind of exquisite balance is not a common item, and only those businessmen with a lot of money can own it.In other words, the Viking woman in the tomb was not only a warrior, but also a businessman.

In fact, the two identities in ancient times were not contradictory.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 a strong force.

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

Finally, when the entire tomb was almost cleared, the filming team from Huaxia came to this place with several experts and started filming, but 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 official language may not be able to understand what the other party is saying.

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

"I'm sorry, Mr. Liang." After Liang En helped them complete the communication, the embassy staff who accompanied the filming team thanked him, "We didn't expect the Irish accent here to be so strong."

The embassy does not usually have many contacts with civilians, so it is natural that there will be various problems when dealing with ordinary staff.

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

(End of this chapter)