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Bảo tàng lịch sử Quốc gia

Vietnam National Museum of History

14/07/2015 19:18 2802
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Phuong Nhi archaeological site located in Yen Loi commune, Y Yen district, Nam Dinh province has been excavated for many times in 2001, 2003, 2005, 2010 and 2012. From April to June/2012, Vietnam National Museum of History (VNMH) coordinated with Nam Dinh Museum to excavate it again.

A sign on the coin

The results of this excavation have revealed a panorama of a construction base of a building dated Ly dynasty and it could be restored in Tran dynasty. Furthermore, a number of construction and decoration materials were found there including objects that were inscribed with various signs and characters.

Sign of wheel

Those signs and characters were found mainly on bricks. Some were painted or handmade and some were made as seals with technique as printing. The seals could be in round or square shapes. However, regarding to the meaning, we classified them as signs and characters.

Other kinds of signs

According to the excavation's statistic, there are 91 samples having signs and 29 samples having characters.

The signs were in different shapes as wheel (14 samples), Buddha leaf, upside down S character (10 samples), concentric circle and others.

Sign of Buddha leaf

The common characters are Chinese characters as 大 (Da), 六 (Liu), 天 (Tian), and 主 (Zhu). The character Da were the most common one with 20/29 samples.

Character S

Maybe, those characters could be used for marking the position of the components before they were fired.

Other characters

In many archaeological sites, the signs and characters were also found on many types of construction and decoration materials. However, this is the first time finding the huge quantity with diversity. It proves a fact that the building at Phuong Nhi site should have had a big scale and complicated structure. The study on the signs and characters found in the construction materials in Phuong Nhi site is necessary for understanding the construction technique in Ly-Tran dynasty.

Chu Mạnh Quyền

EN: Tran Trang

VNMH

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