Of course, we cannot rule out the possibility that Kublai Khan was well-preserved or had a youthful appearance; the difference in appearance between a 79-year-old and a 50- or 60-year-old might not be that significant.
However, at this moment, Zhuang Rui's heart was tipped in favor of Ögedei. The reason was simple: Ögedei died the year after the Mongols destroyed the Jin Dynasty, and the Imperial Seal of the State, which had been plundered by the Jin Dynasty, should have fallen into Ögedei's hands at that time.
At this time, Genghis Khan, the father of Ögedei Khan, had been dead for eight years. Unless it was kept secret and not buried, this Imperial Seal of the State would never have appeared in Genghis Khan's tomb.
Looking at the resolute face in the coffin, Zhuang Rui was more inclined to believe that this was Temujin, the founding Khan of Mongolia, or Kublai Khan, the first emperor of the Yuan Dynasty. The legendary Ögedei Khan was a kind-hearted man, so he probably wouldn't have looked like this, so domineering.
"Hey, why bother with all this? Just look for an epitaph, isn't that enough?"
Zhuang Rui was amused by his own conflicted feelings.
In most tombs, there are records reflecting the identity of the owner. Some tombs will prominently display the owner's life story on the tomb walls, or there will always be a stele in the mausoleum.
Of course, some ancient tombs contain no inscriptions about their owners, in which case we have to look for clues in the burial objects.
Chapter 1161 The Identity of the Tomb Owner (Part 2)
The discovery of the Imperial Seal did not provide Zhuang Rui with direct information about the tomb's occupant; it merely narrowed down the possibilities considerably.
However, Zhuang Rui could not make a definitive conclusion about the tomb's occupant based solely on this jade seal, whether it was Genghis Khan, his son Ögedei Khan, or the brilliant and ambitious Kublai Khan.
Although the Mongol Khanate obtained the Imperial Seal after Genghis Khan's death, this does not mean that the seal could not have appeared in Genghis Khan's mausoleum.
This is because the construction of many imperial tombs was often completed after the emperor's death, sometimes taking decades. Genghis Khan's death was only eight years after the Mongol conquest of the Jin Dynasty, which is hardly significant.
Moreover, Zhuang Rui has sufficient reason to believe that the Genghis Khan recuperation cave in the Alzhai Grottoes is very likely the place where Genghis Khan's body was laid to rest after his death. Due to the massive scale of the underground mausoleum project, he was able to be buried after the destruction of the Jin dynasty.
Of course, this is merely Zhuang Rui's subjective speculation. The truth, and the identity of the tomb's occupant, still requires sufficient evidence.
"Damn it, were all those ancient painters terrible? What kind of skill level is this? They can't even draw a human face properly?"
As a well-known collector and connoisseur of antiques in China, Zhuang Rui has always highly praised the art of ancient Chinese painting. However, at this moment, Zhuang Rui hates the painting techniques of ancient China.
This is because when Zhuang Rui was studying Mongolian history, he had seen portraits of several great khans of the early Mongol Khanates. However, tragically, none of those portraits matched the appearance of the person in the coffin.
Ancient Chinese painting emphasizes freehand brushwork, seeking the mysterious and unpredictable aesthetic characteristics of "spirit resonance" and "artistic conception".
As a result, none of the portraits of ancient emperors resembled the real people. They were either wise and powerful or kind and benevolent. In any case, the portraits had absolutely no relation to the real people.
Actually, it's not fair to blame ancient painters for their lack of skill; it's just that emperors were too difficult to please. Take Zhu Yuanzhang, for example, who had a face full of pockmarks. After becoming emperor, he hired painters to paint his portrait.
The first artist was honest and drew it anyway.
In the portrait, Zhu Yuanzhang is sitting on a chaise longue, wearing a soft square scarf on his head. His face is particularly long, with a prominent forehead and many large and small dirt spots. His eyebrows and eyes are slanted upwards, his nose is large with upturned nostrils, his ears are long and almost reach his shoulders, his mouth is large and wide, and his chin protrudes much more than his forehead, making him look extremely fierce.
This painting is widely regarded by later generations as the one that most closely resembles Zhu Yuanzhang himself, and it is now housed in the Ming Xiaoling Mausoleum in Nanjing.
However, the matter did not end after the painting was finished. When Zhu Yuanzhang saw the painting, he did not say anything, but not long after, he found an excuse to have the painter executed.
When the second painter heard about this, he was afraid of repeating the same mistake when he painted Zhu Yuanzhang, so he simply changed Zhu Yuanzhang's face completely, so that the pockmarks, droopy eyebrows, and upturned nose were gone.
Of course, the incredibly handsome emperor in the dragon robe depicted by the painter had absolutely no connection to Zhu Yuanzhang. Not long after, he was also killed by Zhu Yuanzhang on trumped-up charges of treason.
These two incidents made the court painters feel insecure, and they all feigned illness to avoid working. No one dared to paint a portrait of Zhu Yuanzhang anymore, which enraged Zhu Yuanzhang.
Later, a portrait painter named Chen Yuan figured out the secret and offered to paint a portrait of Zhu Yuanzhang. This relieved his colleagues, but they all doubted Chen Yuan's intelligence.
However, the result was quite surprising to those people. When Chen Yuan painted Zhu Yuanzhang's portrait, he only drew the outline of the face to resemble the emperor's features, and painted the rest according to the emperor's style, so that he looked kind, benevolent and dignified.
Zhu Yuanzhang was very satisfied with the portrait and ordered Chen Yuan to paint several more to distribute to the princes. Chen Yuan was also given the official position of Wenyuan Pavilion Attendant. Of course, no one cared whether the portrait was accurate or not.
Unable to identify the emperor based on his appearance, Zhuang Rui had to find another way. Of course, using the appearance of a corpse as the basis for verifying his identity was something that had never happened before in the history of archaeology, and Zhuang Rui did not have much hope for it.
After shifting his attention, Zhuang Rui first searched the inside of the coffin, but found no objects with writing on them. Apart from the "Imperial Seal of the State," he found no other seals or similar items.
"Damn, how could I forget about that?"
Zhuang Rui was taken aback for a moment, then suddenly realized what was going on and slapped his head repeatedly. He knew that the Mongols did not have their own writing system in the early days, so finding an epitaph was obviously a very unlikely task.
According to historical records, during Genghis Khan's time, when military orders were issued, messengers would often memorize the orders by singing them in their hearts before passing them on to their generals. This method was used until Genghis Khan's death.
In modern times, historians and military strategists rely almost entirely on speculation to deduce the extent of the Mongol military expansion at that time, because the songs that conveyed those commands have long since become a thing of the past on the vast steppe.
Therefore, finding written records in the early tombs of the Mongol Khanate is almost impossible. Zhuang Rui is now only hoping to find some representative objects from that time to deduce the identity of the tomb owner.
Even when Genghis Khan conquered the Naiman in 1204, Tatatonga, the Uyghur official in charge of the Naiman seal, was arrested but still guarded the seal of the state.
Genghis Khan greatly appreciated his loyalty to his country and ordered him to take charge of the documents and seals of the Mongol Empire. He also ordered him to teach the crown prince and other princes the Uyghur script to write Mongolian. From this time onward, the Mongols adopted the Uyghur script to write Mongolian, which is known in academic circles as the Uyghur-style Mongolian script.
This is also the earliest written language to appear in Mongolia, and at that time it only circulated among Mongolian nobles; ordinary Mongolians had no access to these characters.
During the reign of Kublai Khan in the Yuan Dynasty, the Phagspa script, commonly known as the New Mongolian script, was created by Phagspa, the then Tibetan national teacher.
Lacking its own written language and culture, the Mongol Khanate left behind very few written records. Even during the nearly one hundred years of the Yuan Dynasty, historical materials were scarce, which is a major reason for many unsolved mysteries in later Mongol-Yuan history. ...
The tomb owner could not be identified based on his appearance, and no written records were found in the tomb. Zhuang Rui was at a loss. To be honest, his experience in field excavation was not very rich, and he did not know where to start.
Inside the main burial chamber, there were countless burial objects. Zhuang Rui hesitated for a while before starting to examine some brocade, silk, and sheepskin items. He wanted to try his luck, hoping that there might be a word or two left on these items that could help him determine the identity of the tomb's occupant.
However, several hours passed, and Zhuang Rui's expression grew increasingly grim. There were indeed these objects in the tomb, including some exquisitely crafted Persian carpets, but Zhuang Rui still couldn't find the writing he wanted.
Archaeology is a very tedious and meticulous job. Sometimes, it can take several months of investigation to find out the identity of the tomb's occupant when excavating a large tomb.
Although Zhuang Rui possessed the powerful weapon of spiritual energy within his eyes, it was unrealistic to deduce the identity of the owner from the mountain of burial objects in such a short time.
"Damn it, I don't believe it! If I can't dig you out, I can't even figure out your identity..."
Zhuang Rui muttered something indignantly, took a deep breath to calm his restless mood, and after a moment of contemplation, turned his gaze to the exquisitely crafted weapons.
In ancient times, especially for emperors, the weapons they carried often had a symbolic meaning far outweighed their battlefield combat significance, so they would often have their names engraved on them.
Many of the swords and other knives owned by Emperor Qianlong of the Qing Dynasty are engraved with the words "For Emperor Qianlong's Use". Zhuang Rui wanted to start from there and see if he could make any discoveries.
"Damn it, it's so beautifully made, why didn't you carve your name on it?"
Zhuang Rui told himself not to rush, but after looking at thirty or forty well-made weapons, he couldn't help but swear. If they could inlay gold and silver on a weapon, why couldn't they engrave the user's name on it?
"Huh? What's this?"
As Zhuang Rui's gaze swept over the giant golden bow he had already examined, he suddenly noticed a quiver beneath the wall where the bow had been hanging.
The quiver was made of cowhide and decorated with exquisite patterns. Several golden arrowheads protruded from the quiver, and Zhuang Rui seemed to notice some engraved lines on the arrowheads.
"This...this...this should be writing." Zhuang Rui almost jumped up excitedly after focusing his attention on the tiny lines that were almost impossible to notice. The scribbles on them were, in Zhuang Rui's eyes, incredibly beautiful.
These lines, which are difficult for ordinary people to recognize, are the earliest script to appear in Mongolia, which is known in modern academia as "Uyghur-style Mongolian script".
After reading the words "Boerjijin," Zhuang Rui clenched his fist tightly. "Thank God, I recognize these characters..."
To be honest, although Zhuang Rui's research during his doctoral studies focused on Mongolian history and its burial culture, he didn't know much about the early Mongolian script, which was often described as being like gibberish. At most, he could only remember a few names when reading literature.
Chapter 1162 The Identity of the Tomb Owner (Part 2)
Early Mongolian script looked like crawling earthworms, tangled and difficult to decipher. Even today, only a very small number of Mongolian script experts can accurately identify those characters.
Although Zhuang Rui focused on Mongolian burial culture during his doctoral studies, he still found the script quite challenging and did not conduct in-depth research. Fortunately, some related materials contained Mongolian text with annotations.
Upon seeing the four characters "Borjigin," Zhuang Rui became excited, indicating that his previous judgment was correct and that this was indeed a Mongol imperial tomb.
Many people are familiar with the names of the Mongol Khans and later Yuan Dynasty emperors, such as Genghis Khan Temujin and Kublai Khan, but few know their surname, "Borjigin." In the Mongol era, "Borjigin" represented the invincible Golden Family, and all people with the surname "Borjigin" are descendants of Genghis Khan.
Therefore, the words "Boerjijin" appeared on this golden arrow, and their significance is self-evident.
It's important to understand that whether it's an emperor's or a general's tomb, or an ordinary ancient tomb, the burial items are usually objects that the deceased cherished or frequently used. This golden arrow inscribed with the words "Boerjijin" would naturally belong to someone from his family.
"Damn it, where are the words below?"
Just as Zhuang Rui was looking down with great enthusiasm, he was completely dumbfounded, because apart from the surname "Boerjijin" representing the Golden Family, there was no other name on the golden arrow.
"Damn, is this some kind of joke? Will it kill someone to write a few more words?"
If it weren't for the fact that Peng Fei was still in the tent, Zhuang Rui would have definitely cursed out loud. He had been investigating this ancient tomb for a whole day and was about to uncover the identity of the tomb's occupant, but who knew that he would return empty-handed again.
It was like missing a shot from point-blank range in a football match, or like a couple about to make love only to find out the woman has started her period—it was so frustrating that Zhuang Rui almost vomited blood.
"Brother Zhuang, what's wrong? You look terrible. You should go to sleep, I'll keep watch..."
Just as Zhuang Rui was angrily cursing the women of the tomb's owner's family, Peng Fei crawled out of the tent and, by the light of the still-burning campfire, saw Zhuang Rui's pale face, which was flushed with anger.
"It's nothing, I'm going to sleep. Damn, I just had a daydream about being teased by that old Mongolian devil..."
Zhuang Rui muttered something in annoyed, turned around and crawled into the tent. Peng Fei, who was behind him, was a little confused. "What's wrong with Brother Zhuang today? Why does he keep talking about that Mongolian old devil?"
"Could there really be a ghost?"
Listening to the rustling sound of the wind blowing through the grass, even Peng Fei, who was usually fearless and knew nothing of fear, couldn't help but shiver. He got up, gathered some dry firewood and grass, and rekindled the dying campfire.
Not only was Peng Fei, who was suspicious outside, on high alert, but Zhuang Rui, who had entered the tent, was also not relaxed at all, only the location for the reconnaissance was moved from outside to inside the tent.
The series of setbacks left Zhuang Rui feeling somewhat exhausted, not from physical fatigue, but from the prolonged tension on his nerves.
Even if the burial objects in this tomb are abundant and its archaeological value is enormous, what's the use if it can't be excavated? And why bother knowing whose mausoleum it is? There was a time when Zhuang Rui even considered giving up.
However, this thought only flashed through Zhuang Rui's mind. As an archaeologist, the first thing is to maintain enough curiosity, and any object in such a tomb would arouse Zhuang Rui's great thirst for knowledge.
Taking a deep breath, Zhuang Rui felt that he had never been as nervous as he was today since he gained spiritual energy. He had done this kind of calming action countless times.
"Still nothing, old ghost, are you laughing at me? I don't believe I can't find your name." Zhuang Rui examined all the arrows with unwavering determination, then looked dejectedly at the face in the coffin. The corpse, with its eyes closed as if in a deep sleep, had a slightly upturned mouth that seemed to be mocking Zhuang Rui.
"Huh? What's this?"
After idly arguing with the corpse in the coffin, Zhuang Rui's gaze inadvertently swept to the left side of the face, and he couldn't help but pause in surprise.
On the right side of the head of the crystal coffin was the legendary "Imperial Seal of the State". Due to its rare material and rich spiritual energy, it had always attracted Zhuang Rui's attention. He had not paid much attention to the left side of the crystal coffin.
On the left were gold and silver utensils. These things were certainly precious, but in front of the "Imperial Seal of the State," they were nothing. Therefore, when Zhuang Rui checked the items in the coffin, he only glanced at them briefly.
However, when he looked over this time, an object caught Zhuang Rui's attention because it was an arrow about forty centimeters long, made entirely of gold.
Of course, this is also closely related to the fact that the golden arrow that Zhuang Rui just found outside was engraved with the surname "Borjigin".
"Golden Token?"
A term suddenly popped into Zhuang Rui's mind.
Many people may have seen in some ancient TV dramas that when a general holds a battle meeting in his camp, there is often a jar of command arrows on the table in front of him. When an order is given, he will often throw the command arrows.
Those who receive orders will also use the command arrow to mobilize troops and engage in battle; this is the function and origin of the command arrow.
This also led to a popular saying, "Making a chicken feather seem like an imperial edict," which is meant to satirize those who falsely convey orders and make a mountain out of a molehill.