Treasure hunt begins in England

Chapter 752 Bottles
Liang En's estimation of the time was quite accurate. At 11:20 in the evening, they finished all the scanning work and saved the scanned 3D data environment into the computer.

"Can we just go to rest now?" Seeing that Liang En was preparing the room after some manipulations on the computer, Joan of Arc obviously looked a little worried. "Is there no one here?"

"Of course not. I programmed this program to reduce our labor, so it can run automatically." Liang En said as he opened the door of the carriage.

"Go back to sleep now, and the computer will handle everything when you wake up tomorrow morning. To be honest, this is much faster than the traditional manual spelling. The only downside is that it was a bit troublesome to program before—— "

Obviously, the advantages of embracing the progress of the times outweigh the disadvantages, so when I woke up the next morning, the computer program had finished running, and the content of how to splice those fragments was displayed on the screen.

With the help of 3D images, everyone quickly put the pieces together bit by bit. As everyone was busy, a long tube-shaped container of more than 90cm appeared in front of everyone.

The reason why it is called a container is that it is difficult to generalize it to a specific shape except that it is confirmed that it is made of alabaster. If it is a cup, it is too long, but the vase is also not like.

However, for the sake of convenience, Liang En and the others finally decided to use the Chinese character gu to describe this container, but when translated into English, they can only use Vase, which is a vase, to refer to this thing.

What Liang En didn't know was that this thing was named the Warka sacrificial bottle in another world, and it was a national treasure of Iraq.

After a simple measurement, they found that the artwork was 91.4 centimeters high and weighed about 540 kilograms. It was carved from a whole piece of alabaster, but the appearance had lost its luster due to long-term burial in the ground.

But even so, judging from this restored container, the whole container is magnificent and elegant, and the relief is solemn and exquisite.And judging from the style, it should be a product from 3500 to 3000 BC.

Although what they found was just a bunch of fragments when they discovered it before.However, after restoration, the shape of the vessel is complete, and most of the engraving patterns on the bottle body can be seen clearly.

In addition to this bottle, there was another bottle that looked similar in the pile of fragments they found yesterday, but the fragments of that bottle only accounted for a little more than half of the whole, and it was difficult to recover easily.

So everyone is now focusing on restoring the well-preserved bottle. According to their observations, this bottle has traces of restoration in ancient times, which shows that it was valued by its owners in ancient times.

Surrounded by reliefs, the entire length of the bottle is divided into four parallel "strips", or "registers" in art-historical terms.And the meaning complexity of these four rings from bottom to top relief theme increases.

The bottom of the bottom frieze is a wavy line, which may represent the mother rivers of the two river basin civilizations, the Euphrates and the Tigris.

Two types of crops grew out of it evenly and intertwined, possibly barley and flax, or reed-like plants, which were the first crops domesticated by Sumerians and humans.

This alternate presentation on the bottle forms a comfortable sense of rhythm, which is probably also a symbol of domesticated plants, because this arrangement gives people a sense of order, reflecting the artificial order.

At the same time, this sense of rhythm is echoed in the animal relief decorative belt on the decorative belt carved with plants: rams and ewes appear alternately, and seem to be walking slowly in one direction, giving people a kind of beauty like grazing Feel.

These two embossed decorative belts fully reflect the basic state of human beings entering the agricultural society, that is, agriculture and animal husbandry. After all, the Sumerians were the first to cultivate wheat and barley in the world.And domesticated the farming nation of sheep and donkeys.

So on this important ritual vessel, they proudly carved these things on it, and showed these patterns to their gods, and prayed for all well-being.

Above the two decorative strips of animals and plants is an empty decorative strip. This decorative strip has aroused controversy. Some people think that there should be paintings on it, but it has been lost because of the age.

However, some people think that the top was originally at a different content division angle, and it was empty or that it was covered with metal, but now there is only an empty bottle body.

Both of these theories are valid, at least now it seems that the two blank strips look very harmonious on the top of the bottle, but if the carving is full, it will not look so beautiful.

But the place would be beautiful either painted with a pattern or a shiny copper band around it, so figuring out what was there in the past will require further detailed examination to draw conclusions.

The upper layer of this blank decorative belt is engraved with nine naked men, almost identical in appearance and movement, marching to the left in a line.

Each of them held up a vessel in front of them, which contained important agricultural products of Mesopotamia: fruits, grains, and wine.

In ancient West Asia, the number and style of clothes worn by those people in the works of art indicated the identities of these people, the less they wore, the lower their status.
Wearing nothing like this usually means low social status, so they may be servants or slaves.

The decorative belt on the top is the widest and most complex, and it should be the core. According to the restored pattern, Liang En and the others tried to make some interpretations:
The center of the scene appears to depict a man and a woman facing each other.A smaller, unclothed man stands between them, holding what appears to be a container full of produce.

The woman's long robe and long hair indicate that she is a god, and she should also be wearing an elaborate crown on her head.This part was repaired in ancient times, and it is likely that it was accidentally damaged during past use.

This is very reasonable, because this part is close to the mouth of the entire container, and we will find that this type of container is indeed easy to accidentally damage the mouth in our daily life.

Behind this woman are two bundles of reeds, which symbolize the goddess Ishtar, so this woman may represent the goddess.The image of the man opposite her was almost completely destroyed, except for the hem of one of his robes.

However, men wearing similar robes can often be seen in the carvings of other ruins at the same time, so referring to these examples, Liang En reconstructed him as a king wearing a robe, a beard, and a headband.

The fringe of his robe is held behind him by another diminutive man, probably the king's steward or squire, in a short skirt.

After the reeds behind the goddess Ishtar there is another part of the complex scene: two horned and bearded rams carry two pedestals, on each of which stands a statue.

The statue on the left is inscribed with the cuneiform symbol "EN", which means "chief priest" in Sumerian.The statue on the right stands before another bundle of reeds.

Behind the ram is a series of presents, including two large bottles that look a lot like the bottle itself.

"There is no doubt that this is the top sacrificial item in this city." After a general inspection, Liang En said, "It should be regarded as the most important weapon in the country at that time."

(End of this chapter)