curse

Chapter 15

It was already late at night, and Wen Haogu woke up from a small doze. He knew that he was no longer the young man who could spend the night in archaeological work in the ancient tomb 20 years ago.He sighed and looked at the night outside the window again. The tea in the cup was already cold, so he picked up the thermos and made it again.He took a sip of the strong tea lightly, and the strong tea entered his body through the throat, and the dream he just had when he was taking a nap appeared before his eyes again—he dreamed of opening.

Sweat finally broke out on Wen Haogu's forehead. It was just a dream. He never believed in dreams, not even Freud's "The Interpretation of Dreams", but at this moment he was a little nervous.The strong tea gave him some energy. He picked up the academic journal again, and he had already read the last few pages. In the archaeological news report, he saw such an article titled "Lop Nur Wants to Cry Without Tears" : The Loulan Historic Site Was Robbed".

This topic touched something in Wen Haogu's heart, and he read out a passage of text softly-"The experts came to Loulan City and were surprised to see four large pits about 4 meter deep and 1 meters in diameter recently dug. , near the 'Sanjianfang' and 'Dwellings' respectively, and one of the big pits was dug directly in the middle of a house. The 'Sanjianfang' was the highest-standard building in the city, and archaeologists believed that it was the official government office at that time. Since Sven After Hedin discovered the ancient city of Loulan and unearthed a large number of precious Khalu documents under the corner of the three rooms, Tachibana Ruichao from Japan and Stein from the United Kingdom both excavated here and brought the cultural relics out of the country. These The cultural relics were later collected by museums, and there was an upsurge of "Loulan Studies" in the world.

"The Milan ruins are a vast area. The ruins mainly include the city walls of Milan, two Buddhist temples, and the cemetery. Along the city walls and at the base of the Buddhist temples, large pits can be seen everywhere. Milan belongs to the ancient Loulan Kingdom. , the Han Dynasty used to farm here, a controversial view is that this is the new capital of the Loulan Kingdom after its capital was moved. The wonderful mural "angel with wings" and the Tubo Tibetan wooden tablet from the [-]th to the [-]th century AD have been found here; This is an important historical site that reveals the mysterious rise and fall of the ancient kingdom of Loulan, and it is also a proof of the rare exchanges between Tubo and the Western Regions in historical records.

"In the past, the wind and sand weather in the Lop Nur area was the main destructive force for these ruins. Now, man-made disasters are greater than natural disasters."

Wen Haogu closed the publication before he finished reading the article. He raised his head, his eye sockets seemed a little wet. In fact, he knew most of the contents of this article. For more than ten years, he has been paying attention to all parts of the country. cultural relics theft, especially in Xinjiang.Almost every time there is a robbery of cultural relics in Xinjiang, he can get the internal news through special channels at the first time, and every time such news comes, his heart will tremble.He said it again meaningfully-"man-made disasters are greater than natural disasters".

Wen Haogu knows that, in a sense, everyone is suspected of tomb robbers. What the pioneers of Loulan archaeology, Sven Hedin and Stein, did, isn’t it a kind of behavior like a tomb robber? ?It has been a full 1900 years since the Swedish Sven Hedin discovered the ancient city of Loulan on March 3, 28 on the Lop Nur wasteland, and started excavating the following year.Those who came to this area before and after that include Przewalski and Kozlov of Tsarist Russia, Bergmann of Sweden, Huntington of the United States, Stein of the United Kingdom, Rui Chao of Japan, etc. Back then, the West and Japan were almost Some people came to Lop Nur, or entered the ancient city of Loulan to excavate nearby ancient tombs.Naturally, Loulan could not escape the fate of being excavated and looted again and again, and cultural relics were taken away.

On the back cover of that academic journal, Wen Haogu saw a picture he was all too familiar with. It was a colorful mural painting of 7 little angels with wings.These 7 little angels in European classical style are staring ahead flexibly with their big eyes open, and their small lips are slightly retracted, which is simply beautiful to the extreme. In 1907, at the Milan site in Xinjiang, this mural stunned the famous Stein. He immediately thought of the beautiful portraits of ancient Greek girls. These angel images from the Western world were invited into the Buddhist temple on the southern edge of the desert. Acted as the guardian and propagandist of Buddhism.

Wen Haogu also looked at this picture quietly, and was shocked when he saw this mural with his own eyes many years ago.And now, he thought of the eyes, the big, bright eyes in the mural looking at him.

It's almost dawn.

(End of this chapter)