The emperor's seal button is in the image of an owl. [Photo/jxnews.com.cn]

Over 5,000 pieces of bamboo slips will be interpreted

Wu Shunqing, an expert on wood lacquer protection who is on the Haihunhou tomb archaeology panel, said that the thousands pieces of wood lacquer and bamboo slips unearthed from the tomb are quite difficult to restore. "The wood lacquers were dry previously, but after going through a severe earthquake during the Eastern Jin Dynasty (AD 317-420), the tomb was immersed in water, which greatly damaged the bamboo slips."

After painstaking work, archaeologists have successfully cleaned more than 5,000 bamboo slips, and infrared scanning allows the faded handwriting to be read. An initial interpretation of the slips shows contents from ancient books such as The Analects of Confucius, The Book of Changes and The Book of Rites. The early stage of protecting and extracting the bamboo slips will be completed before the end of the year and the overall interpretation and study of the words on slips will start in 2017.