Shuozhou Shuiquanliang Northern Qi Preliminary investigation and analysis of the diseases of tomb murals
"World of Cultural Relics" 2013 Issue 01
HU Wenying
HU Wenying
Shuozhou Shuiquanliang Mural Tomb is located in Shuiquanliang Village, Shuozhou City, Shanxi Province. After being discovered by local villagers in 2008, rescue archaeological excavations were jointly carried out by Shanxi Archaeology Research Institute, Shanxi Museum , Shuozhou Municipal Cultural Relics Bureau, and Chongfu Temple Cultural Relics Management Institute. The Shuiquanliang Mural Tomb is a large-scale and relatively complete-preserved Northern Qi mural tomb found in the Shuozhou area. The tomb room is full of painted murals, with vivid images, bright colors and rich expression content.
1. Mural description content
Shuozhou Shuiquanliang mural tomb consists of a seal, a tomb passage, a corridor, and a tomb chamber. The murals removed can be divided into two parts: corridor and a tomb chamber. The overall mural is preserved in good condition. The mural vividly reproduces the historical and social style related to the identity, status and life of the tomb owner. The murals were painted in the Northern Qi Dynasty and were one of the precious remains of early Chinese painting art. They have important reference value for the study of Northern Qi society, history, art and other aspects. The content of the mural can be mainly divided into two parts: corridor and tomb chamber. The two walls of the corridor are painted with 1 tall civil servant, 2 sword guards, and 3 small long-range riding horse teams. The form is basically symmetrical, but the horse team is moving in the opposite direction. tomb chamber mural is divided into four layers, from top to bottom, the astronomical image, the four gods image, the twelve zodiac image, and the main mural of the four walls centered on the life of the tomb owner and his wife. The layers are separated by red stripes. The first floor mural is a celestial image on the top of the tomb. The background color is dark gray, with white dots on it to express the stars. A winding white Milky Way runs diagonally from the southwest to the northeast at the entrance of the thief cave. The east side of the Milky Way is painted with the image of a sun containing the three-legged Yangwu, and the west side of the moon containing the pounding rabbit and toad. The second layer of mural is a picture of the four gods. The four gods are simply drawn in the four directions of east, west, south, north, and east, respectively. The four gods are separated by the images of divine beasts, and the blanks are drawn with ink lines. The third floor mural is a picture of the twelve zodiac signs, where the image of the rat is in the middle of the north wall, and the other zodiac signs are ox, tiger, rabbit, dragon, snake, horse, sheep, monkey, chicken, dog, and pig in the clockwise direction. The fourth floor mural is the mural of the tomb chamber, the north wall is the feast of the tomb owner and his wife. The east wall is the saddle horse and the horse ceremonial guard. The west wall is the ox cart traveling. The south wall is the drums and drums.
Shuozhou Shuiquanliang murals are both realistic and decoration. They use concise and proficient lines to depict scenes such as banquets, bands, travel, and ceremonial guards of the tomb owners. There are also pictures of the Four Gods, Astronomy and Twelve Times (Zodiac) similar to Lou Rui’s tomb. The pictures are rich in colors, bright in colors, vivid in images, and have high artistic level and research value.
2. Investigation on the current status of mural diseases
Scientific protection of unearthed murals must be based on investigation and analysis of mural diseases and causes. The murals of Shuiquanliang have experienced many typical diseases after thousands of years of environmental erosion and many artificial destruction by tomb robbers. It mainly includes hollowing and cracks in the whole mural; the ground layer is crispy and even powdered, and large-area hollowing causes the ground layer to fall off, etc.: the pigment layer is armored, faded, and fall off: artificial smoke, digging, smearing, bumping, scratching; changes in the overall tomb environment caused by holes, water stains and mud stains on the surface of the mural, etc.
(I) Overall disease of mural
1. Before the mural surface is protected and uncovered, tomb robbers have divided the surface of the mural on a large area of picture and patched. The smoky damage to the picture is caused by tomb robbers keeping warm or baking in the tomb room. The smoke damage is mainly concentrated in the upper half of the tomb room. If the smoke is severe, the walls will be pitch black, and the murals on the top of the door opening are most severely damaged. After polarization microscope, detection and analysis, the surface of the smoked mural is densely filled with carbon particles.
2. The fading and falling of pigment layer are excavated by the tomb robbers. The large thief hole that goes straight to the open air has greatly changed the tomb environment. The long-term entry and circulation of air in the tomb chamber will inevitably affect the temperature and humidity of the tomb environment, accelerate the aging of the mural materials, and cause the overall fading, armoring, and falling off of the murals. The change in the humidity of the tomb chamber causes the flow of moisture in the structure layer of the mural, and at the same time drives the movement of salt, causing diseases such as crispy alkali, herpes, etc. in the mural. On the other hand, the rain stains flowing into the thief hole mixed with soil and continued to wash away, which also caused the surface of the mural to fade, water stains, mud stains, pollution and other damage.
3 mural hollow and ground layer falls off: Because the structure of the tomb chamber is dome top, under the action of long-term gravity and the aging of the mural production materials, the murals in the tomb chamber have certain hollowing from top to bottom, especially in the middle and upper layer of the brick wall support body, the hollowing is the most serious. You can feel the shaking when you touch it with your hand. There are large-scale falls off of the ground layer and the picture is missing in many places. The middle and upper murals around the tomb chamber are generally hollow, and accompanied by severe hollowing, many cracks appear on the screen. Due to the decay of plant fibers and aging of cementing materials in the local war, most of the fallen local murals have been broken and cannot be spliced and restored, but they can be collected and sorted as detection sampling blocks.
4 The ground layer of the vegetation layer has completely decayed and powdered from the mural fragments that fell off to the ground. The mural's overall deterioration of lime layer, rotten material decay, cemented material aging, and other factors caused by the long-term time of the mural's body, causing large areas of crispy alkali in the mural's ground layer, and the pigment layer that develops locally to the picture causes abrasive, herpes, powdering, and shedding. The surface layer of lime in the mural's pigment layer and the brick body is relatively strong, but the middle part of the ground layer is severely crispy, making it "sandwich biscuits", which causes great difficulties in the processing of the back of the painting in the later stage.
5 The surface of the mural is painted on the lower floor of the four walls of the tomb chamber and on both sides of the corridor inside the tomb door. There are pre-cut lines for tomb robbers to steal the murals. The tomb robbers used blue straight frames to draw the wonderful and well-preserved parts of the murals. During the stealing process, it also caused many scratches, bumps and other damages to the murals.
6 Digging holes on the wall: In addition to smoke, tomb robbers may have digged three walls on the north, east and west walls in the tomb chamber for reasons such as looking for treasures and dark rooms, which caused very serious direct damage to the murals. This not only causes the loss of the picture layer, but also damages the cementity and strength of the overall ground layer, resulting in large-scale hollowing, ground layer crispy alkali, and shedding around the hole.
(II) Types and distribution of mural diseases
1. corridor: The murals in the entire corridor have been damaged by smoke, especially the brightness contrast between the picture before and after the patch, and the top of the corridor is severely smoked and the blackness of the black (Figure 1). Although the top part of the corridor vault is greatly affected by gravity, the hollow phenomenon is less than that of the tomb chamber because of the flat surface of the support structure and the good cementation of the transition layer. The prominent diseases of the doormen on both sides of the corridor are manifested as serious mud stains in the lower half, resulting in the missing picture, and the crispy alkali in the ground layer also directly affects the effect of the screen, and the local ground layer falls off and leads to the missing picture layer. The main diseases of the east and west yiwei in the corridor are similar to those of the doorman. The lower part of the mud stains are severely damaged, resulting in the loss of the picture. The crispy alkali in the ground layer directly affects the picture. The local ground layer falls off and the picture without patching is clearly distinguished from the brightness and color of the picture without patching. There are many bump marks on the overall picture of the corridor, and herpes and dot-like fall off on the surface of the pigment layer are common.
2. There is a large robber's hole dug by tomb robbers at the bottom of the upper floor of the north wall of the tomb chamber (Figure 2). The robber's hole leads directly to the outside of the tomb chamber. The long-term air entry of the external tomb chamber has led to changes in the tomb environment. A large amount of rainwater mixed with soil flows into the tomb chamber along the robbery hole. The repeated erosion of water and mud stains has also caused great harm to the mural.The location below the thief hole is connected to an image of a divine beast on the upper layer of the mural and an image of a zodiac ox on the middle layer. Due to the damage to the rain and the gravity of the coupon part, the image is already invisible. Changes in the tomb environment have also accelerated the aging of mural materials, causing serious hollowing and falling off of the murals. The diseases in the lower layer of the north wall are mainly caused by smoke to the surface of the mural. Several scratches cause overall damage to the mural picture and the ground layer. The water stains and mud stains flowing along the thieves damage to the mural's pollution, and the cracks caused by hollowing may be concentrated in the opening area. In addition, in the middle of the tomb owner and his wife, it was obviously damaged by tomb robbers. The ground guard layer around the hole fell off large areas and the screen layer was missing, which also caused damage to the surrounding ground guard layer.
3. The most prominent disease of the east wall mural of the tomb chamber is that the upper part of the lower mural was severely damaged by tomb robbers (Figure 3). For some reason, the tomb robbers dig the wall, causing direct and large-scale damage to the mural during the digging process. The opening position of the tomb chamber above the digging hole fell off about 2 meters long. There were many pre-cut lines in the middle of the picture, and mud stains were contaminated at the lower part. The middle and upper layers of the mural are located exactly the part of the tomb. Under the influence of long-term gravity, the mural is hollow and cracked in large areas, and at the same time, the ground layer is sluggish and artificial smoky diseases are serious.
4. There is damage caused by tomb robbers on the upper floor of the west wall of the tomb chamber. It is located above the zodiac rooster and the dog. In the era of this thief, rainwater has not flowed in for a long time, and the damage caused to the murals is not much (Figure 4). Some murals at the beginning of the west wall are seriously hollow, and the ground layer produces crispy alkali and falls off. There are obvious holes on the mural of the west wall. The phenomenon of ground fighting is also concentrated on the image of the ox cart, and the falling screen layer has been broken. In addition, there is smoke pollution caused by tomb robbers on the mural, and there is severe mud stains on the lower part, and the mud stains are hardened.
5. South wall of the tomb chamber: The disease of the tomb chamber mural is first manifested in the large-scale fallout of the ground guard layer on both sides of the lower door opening of the mural, and there are also serious hollowness in the upper layer of the mural and cracks are produced in many places (Figure 5). There is also a large missing piece of the ground guard layer at the waist of the crimson-red pedestal on the east side of the south wall. In addition, there are also the overall ground layer slurry, artificial smoke from tomb robbers, multiple scratches, and bump damage marks. There are local ground-fighting layers at the bottom of the lower layer of the mural and serious mud stains. The diseases of the pigment layer are mainly fading and local dot-like falls off.
3. Preliminary analysis of the causes of mural diseases
The formation of mural diseases is closely related to the mural's own situation, environmental factors and human factors.
1. Reasons for the factors of the mural itself
The factors of the mural itself include the production materials, craftsmanship, structure, and structural characteristics of the tomb chamber. The basic structure of the Shuiquanliang mural is shown in the figure below (Figure 6)
Shuozhou Shuiquanliang Beiqi Tomb mural is painted in a circular dome-top single-chamber tomb made of blue bricks. The tomb room is square in the plane of the arc-side, and some murals are painted on the top and sides of the corridor. Its support body is a wall made of blue bricks. The blue brick used is 33.534.5 cm long, 16~17 cm wide, and 4.2~5 cm thick. The brick body is gray-green, with rope patterns imprinted on one side, low heat, not very firm texture, and more small pores can be seen on the cross section. Some bricks turn light brown because the heat is too low, and red mud is used as the binder between the bricks. The ground layer is a lime layer with a thickness of 1 to 3 cm added to the plant-based reinforced material. From the fallen mural residue, it can be seen that there is no mortar or grass mixing mud layer between the ground layer and the brick layer.
is based on the material relationship of the ground layer. Over time, under the action of lime, red mud material in the support, water in the underground soil environment in the tomb, and saline-alkali as the ground layer of the mural, ripe lime absorbs carbon dioxide in the air and gradually hardens. The cementing material added during the mural production also gradually ages and loses adhesion. At the same time, the cementing material produces local shrinkage during drying or aging, causing the pigment layer to be pulled out from the surface of the lower structure, which is a phenomenon of anaerobicity [4.At the same time, as the adhesive, the quaternary layer of lime texture is very easy to react with acidic substances and lose its bonding effect due to its chemical properties of the strong alkali and weak acid salt of . For example, calcium carbonate reacts with acid rain containing sulfuric acid in the air or sulfides in the atmosphere to form calcium sulfate , which leads to damage to the mural structure and causes quaternary layer of minced alkali. In addition, cherryl is a phenomenon of loss of mechanical strength of the material caused by the loss of cohesion inside the mural structure. The decay or even powdering of the plant-based fiber material added to the ground control layer is also one of the reasons for the crust. The ground layer of the squid is one of the most serious damages to murals. If the squid is diffused to the pigment layer, it will cause the cementing material and surface coating in the pigment layer to age, resulting in fading, powdering, etc. The cementing materials in the mural pigment layer are mostly organic materials. The aging and degradation of the cementing materials caused by various factors makes it impossible for them to bond the pigment particles together, which also forms the aging phenomenon of the pigment layer. The aging of the ground strata and the aging of the strata are also the main reasons for the large-area hollowing of the murals.
Shuiquan beam tomb chamber structure is a single-chamber circular dome top structure. From the vault part around the tomb chamber, the surface structure of the support body is jagged. Compared with the vertical wall, the cementing force of the ground guard layer is uneven and is also affected by gravity. These factors are also one of the reasons for hollowing of the mural (Figure 7).
2. The impact of environmental factors on murals
In the natural environment, climate forms an invisible potential destructive factor on cultural relics. Shuozhou City has a continental monsoon climate of temperate zone, and is a cold semi-arid climate zone in northern Shanxi. Its main feature is that it has distinct four seasons. The law of temperature distribution in Shuozhou is to decrease from southeast to northwest. Shuozhou is located in Loess Plateau , with sufficient sunshine and an average annual temperature of about 3.6℃~7.3℃~. The environment inside the tomb chamber is connected to the external environment due to the robbery of the hole. The occurrence of diseases is closely related to the changes in the microenvironment and climate in the cave.
Moisture factor: The preservation of tomb murals is slow and complex due to the tomb environment in which they are located. Among various environmental factors, moisture has the greatest effect on murals. Water can dissolve soluble materials in murals, such as cementitious materials in pigment layers, and make the murals degummed and powdered. For example, a large number of water stains enter the picture below the murals under the lower layer of the north wall, and the surface of the murals is washed to make the pigment layer powdered and fall off. Water can also dissolve soluble and slightly soluble salts and binders in the pellet layer, making the pellet layer loose and reduce its strength or even crispy alkali. At the same time, due to the action of water, the fiber reinforced material in the ground control layer is eroded by microorganisms and and ages and rots. In short, the various moisture flowing in from capillary action , condensation, dehisitation and holes create favorable conditions for chemical reactions and accelerate the aging of murals.
salt factor: There is a large amount of salt in the production materials of the mural and the tomb environment. Through ion titration analysis, the ground layer of the Shuiquanliang mural contains the following anions (S042-CLHCO; CO2) of slightly soluble or soluble salt components such as calcium sulfate, calcium carbonate, etc. The irregular movement of these soluble salts is one of the important reasons for the ground layer of the mural. The movement of moisture drives the movement of salt. Salts produce dissolution, migration, crystallization and recrystallization during irregular movements. The crystallization of the slightly soluble salts is generally 1 to 2 mm from the surface of the mural, and sometimes deeper. Therefore, it damages the ground layer and pigment layer greatly, making the ground layer of the mural loose, the plant fibers rot, and the cementing material in the pigment aging, causing diseases such as aphrodisiac, herpes, and shedding of the ground layer layer.
Other environmental factors: After the mural is completed, it will be in the tomb environment. It is relatively well preserved when the tomb has not been robbed, but many robbery holes will cause air pollution or even light effects. Sulfides, carbon dioxide and suspended particles in air pollution will cause some damage to murals. 3. Destruction of murals by human factors
Shuozhou Shuiquanliang murals have been obviously robbed three times. Therefore, among all the diseases to murals, human factors cause the most types of diseases and the degree of damage is the most direct.
thieves were destroyed at the northeast corner of the top of the tomb chamber. Tomb robbers dug a large thieves with a width of about two meters from the top of the sealed soil. The thieves were directly connected to the open air. Air, dust, rain, snow, etc. entered with the thieves, breaking the relative stability of the thieves environment and having a direct impact on the changes in the mural preservation environment. The moisture penetrates the wall and flows down the surface of the mural, which also causes changes in the mural pigment layer and ground layer, accelerating the aging of mural pigment, cementing materials, reinforced materials, etc., causing the mural to have various diseases such as fading, falling off, ashing, herpes, ground layer crispy alkali, falling off, and powdering.
Smoke pollution: During the last excavation, the tomb robbers used blue lines to divide the pictures with wonderful preserved content and reinforced the murals with gauze. Afterwards, the tomb robbers died unexpectedly while keeping warm or baking the glue material of the patch to survive. Smoke pollution is concentrated in the upper half of the mural, including the upper half of the mural. The underburned carbon and some organic matter in the fuel settle on the surface of the mural. A large number of carbon black particles condensed on the picture layer, making the original white background layer of the picture look gray or even black.
Chiseling and digging, scratching, bumping, and smearing: The three walls on the north, east and west walls of the tomb chamber were all excavated by tomb robbers, and the depth of the chiseling is up to the brick. The murals around the holes were naturally seriously damaged, the most serious of which were hollowing, crushing, and even falling off to the ground. During the violent excavation process, scratches and bumps can be seen in many places. In addition, the scribble marks of the murals are obvious, and the remaining handwriting on the picture shows that the division and choice of the picture effect is a mural thief with certain experience.
In addition to the above main factors, further in-depth detection and analysis of mural diseases caused by other factors is needed. In short, the types and causes of Shuiquanliang murals are common and complex. Based on the above preliminary disease investigation, the large area of hollowing of the mural and the general puffing of the ground layer poses a great threat to the protection of the mural, so overall protection measures were taken to the Shuiquanliang mural. The excavation of the Shuiquanliang mural tomb and the revelation of murals provide important physical reference materials for studying the shape of tombs in northern Shanxi during this period, its influence on the later tomb system, and the development of tomb mural art.
(Project Fund : 2010 National Cultural Relics Administration (Cultural Relics Museum Letter [2010] No. 256) "Approval on the Protection and Restoration Plan for the Collection of Beiqi Murals"
[1] See for details: Shanxi Provincial Archaeology Research Institute, Shanxi Museum, Shuozhou Municipal Cultural Relics Bureau, Chongfu Temple Cultural Relics Management Institute "Brief Introduction to the Excavation of Beiqi Mural Tomb in Shuozhou Shuozhou Shuozhou", "Cultural Relics" No. 12, 2010, 26-41.
[2] Disease Reference for the damage investigation standards: The industry standard for cultural relics protection of the People's Republic of China, diseases and illustrations of ancient murals (WW/T0001-2007).
[3] Zhao Linyi, Wang Wanfu, Ma Zanfeng, Zhang Guobin, Su Bomin , Yang Tao, "Causes of diseases of the Luobulinka murals in Tibet and their prevention and control measures", "Chinese Tibetan Studies" No. 3, 2009, pp. 54-60.
[4] Zhao Tianyu, Zhang Huyuan , Yan Gengsheng, Liu Ping, Zhang Yongxia "Research on the Earth-water Characteristics of Mogao Grottoes Murals", " Dunhuang Research " 2011 No. 6, pp. 36-42.
[5] "China Cultural Relics Protection and Restoration Technology", edited by the Chinese Academy of Cultural Heritage Research, Science Press , pp. 322-327, 2009.
[6] Du Jianjun, Liu Hongli, Zhang Zhengmo, Xue Ping "Microenvironmental Characteristics of Yulin Grottoes in Guazhou and Its Diseases in Mubbles Preliminary analysis of the impact, "Dunhuang Research" No. 6, 2009.
[7] Data comes from the Baidu Encyclopedia of Internet Resources.
[8] Chen Gangquan "Analysis of moisture sources that cause the occurrence of herpes disease in the mural of Cave 351 of Mogao Grottoes and preliminary simulation experiments of herpes disease" "Dunhuang Research" No. 6, 2010, pp. 54-58.
[9] Picture description basic pictures are from "Brief Report on the Excavation of Beiqi Mural Tomb of Shuiquanliang, Shuozhou, Shanxi".
(the author's work unit Shanxi Museum)
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