It was now late August of that same year. The season was rapidly coming to an end, and Dr. Weiskopf was a happy, happy man. He had at last found the tomb of King Da Yi of Shang, and although one small corner had been looted, the rest of the tomb was intact, pristine, and brilliant. A rich assemblage of artifacts had been recovered, and the world of Chinese archeology was all agog.
Surveying the excavation in the dripping heat of a summer afternoon, Weiskopf, borrowing freely from Dante Alighieri’s Divina Commedia, observed to Schilling that they had at first been in the depths of the Inferno when they found the tomb had been disturbed, then in the Purgatorio of uncertainty until it was discovered all was not lost after all.
“Then, we were transported to Paradiso,” he finished, with a flourish. “What a season it has been, Eduard. What a time we have had.”
As the summer progressed, and the excavation with it, more laborers were hired, and more students arrived as word spread of the momentous discovery. The dig gained international fame, thanks to the appearance of a staff writer and photographer from Life Magazine in the United States and other members of the foreign press, all eager to tell the tale of China’s ancient wonders.
An English newspaper trumpeted, It is the greatest archeological discovery since the excavation of the tomb of King Tutankhamun in Egypt’s Valley of the Kings by Howard Carter in 1922.
Visitors came from near and far. Government luminaries, distinguished scholars from major Chinese and foreign universities, and even three officials from the illustrious Academia Sinica journeyed from Beijing to gaze enraptured at what had been found. The merely curious came in their thousands as well, compelling a worried Weiskopf to hire more guards. He was unused to the notoriety his work had attracted, and he did not like it at all. He feared for the safety of his crew and the artifacts.
The size of that crew had been increased in June by the University of Leipzig’s sending of four of its most promising graduate students to China, apparently without regard to any budgetary concerns Herr Bergdorf might have had. The university basked in the reflected glory of Weiskopf’s fame, and suddenly nothing was too expensive.
One of the four, a fresh-faced young fellow of only twenty named Gerhard Martins, so impressed Weiskopf with his skills and brilliance, he gave him responsibility for artifact photography, cataloging, and classification, thereby freeing Schilling for full-time duties as assistant director.
Even the puissant Professor Bergdorf himself travelled to the site, enduring hours of deafening discomfort aboard a propeller-driven aircraft, followed by an overnight ordeal on a dilapidated Chinese train with, in his words, the hardest seats known to God or man. Hands behind his back and wearing a broad straw hat to protect his balding pate, he walked about the site, carefully observing the work, asking numerous questions, and becoming progressively more impressed and excited. Notwithstanding his interest, however, he staunchly refused to sleep at the site in a tent. He insisted on staying at the Zhengzhou guesthouse and being driven to and fro each day. Weiskopf decided it would be less than prudent to point out the considerable additional cost in fuel this service represented, although he would dearly have loved to do so.
“You have crowned your career with this find, Aaron,” Bergdorf said one evening as the Ford bounced along the road to the city. “The university is proud of you, and you will be remembered for this great accomplishment.”
After a five-day stay, an hour of which was spent studying Weiskopf’s account books followed by a perfunctory nod of approval, Bergdorf bade the team a hearty farewell, wished them continued success, and departed. One incident had marred his visit. Weiskopf told him he had made a bargain with the Academia Sinica that the artifacts would be returned to China after being studied and briefly displayed in Germany.
“What possessed you?” demanded Bergdorf. “We have not done that before. Why send these things back? They will all be better off in our museum. I doubt the Chinese will take proper care of them, anyway, and it will be expensive to return everything. Why should we be asked to pay for that?”
“I had no choice, Herr Professor,” Weiskopf explained as humbly as he could. He wanted to avoid an outright confrontation. “The Academia was threatening to take over the excavation and that would have been a disaster for the university.”
“Were they indeed?” asked Bergdorf, in a dry voice. “Well, we shall see. It is we who have paid for everything, not they. China is on the brink of civil war, while Germany has never been better led than she is now. Where will these treasures be safer, here or there? The answer is obvious.”
“I think they are entrusting the collection to us until China, herself, achieves stability,” Weiskopf suggested respectfully, and Bergdorf responded with a derisive snort.
“And when will that be? The oriental peoples are like the Slavs, Aaron. They have no concept of orderly government. They are anarchists at heart.”
Weiskopf could tell Bergdorf was envisioning the entire glittering collection on prominent display in the university museum in perpetuity.
“I gave them my word,” he said. “I promised that when we had studied the assemblage, photographed everything, and published our findings and conclusions, we would return everything to China. It is a matter of honor.”
“You promised them,” growled Bergdorf, “not I.”
Bergdorf was adamant, and Weiskopf let the matter drop. In any case, it would take years to study fully the vast collection, and who knew what the situation would be by then? He decided he would cross that bridge when he came to it.
I wonder when Professor Bergdorf is due to retire.
“Well,” he said, “let us finish the work and get the collection home to Leipzig. There will be plenty of time to decide what to do after that.”
“Just so,” said Bergdorf, stone-faced.
One afternoon, three weeks after Bergdorf’s departure, Weiskopf, in the bottom of the excavation, got up off his knees, his joints cracking as he straightened his legs. The pit was now almost twelve meters long by six wide; its floor divided into squares by lengths of white cord. In each square, two or three men knelt carefully clearing away the dry earth with trowels and brushes. A constant parade of other men, each carrying a basket of earth, moved up a slope dug into the end of the pit opposite the brick ramp, while another line came down, their baskets empty. Weiskopf’s brown overalls hung loosely on his lean frame, and he wore his customary broad-brimmed hat as protection from the merciless sun which beat down into the deep excavation, turning it into a shimmering crucible. He put his hands on his hips, surveying the scene around him with satisfaction. He had made many remarkable discoveries in his years of work in China, but here, in this excavation in the Yellow River valley, he had unearthed nothing short of a treasure trove. He and his team had recovered over a thousand oracle bones, along with the remains of chariots, carts, horses, bronze weapons by the score, and bronze vessels of every sort. There was a great deal of gold and many precious gemstones as well as jade, agate and lapis jewelry. It seemed every day brought the revelation of new wonders.
The site was also rich in artifacts from non-Shang traditions, confirming Weiskopf’s contention that trade was widespread and well-established. The masterful jade carvings of the Liangzhu peoples were of special interest to him, as were the intricately decorated black ceramic vases and bowls from the Neolithic culture of the Longshan, which had survived well into Shang times in remote areas. Ivory from the southern regions was abundant, along with ornaments and a vast fortune in cowry shell money. The bones of Da Yi himself had come to light in late July, resting amid the rotted remains of his red lacquered wooden sarcophagus, along with the skeletons of several concubines and the decapitated corpses of three-hundred-and-twenty-eight slaves.
But now, at the end of August, the excavation was virtually complete. The workers on the pit floor were beginning to encounter sterile soil, devoid of artifacts and showing no trace of human activity. There was almost nothing more to be done. Tons of soil had been carried by hand out of the pit, and every gram of it had been sieved and scrutinized. Not a bead or a chip of bone had been overlooked. The numerous artifacts, large and small, had all been recorded, classified, and catalogued by the endlessly energetic young Gerhard Martins, and before long, it would be time to think of closing down.
Calling to Schilling, Weiskopf pointed to where he had been kneeling.
“I think there’s an oracle bone there, Eduard. Do you see the tip of it…just at the surface? Shall we have a look?”
The two men knelt and with Schilling wielding a small, flat trowel, and Weiskopf a soft paintbrush, they carefully cleared the loose, sandy soil away from the flat object which soon revealed itself as the plastron of a turtle, the surface of which was covered with a pattern of branching cracks like the fine tendrils of a plant.
“Aha, another one,” said Schilling, beckoning Martins to come and photograph the object in situ before lifting it clear of the ground.
“Let’s see what it says,” said Weiskopf, as they got to their feet. Taking the plastron, he brushed away the last of the soil, muttering, “It’ll probably be about the best place for the king to go hunting, and what he’ll kill there if he does.”
“Excuse me, Herr Professor,” said Martins, “just look this way for a moment, please, and hold the bone where we can see it.” The shutter clicked. “Excellent. Thank you.”
Turning the bone into the sunlight, Weiskopf studied the incised characters for nearly a full minute, occasionally using his brush or blowing away grains of soil, before looking at Schilling, his eyes wide.
“Well, Eduard, we really have something here.” Weiskopf’s dark eyes positively sparkled. “This is definitely not just another ordinary oracle bone.”
“What is it, Aaron? You look as if you’ve just inherited a million marks.”
“Better than that, Eduard, he said. “It’s direct confirmation of the battle of Mingtiao, and the existence of Lord Chang. So far as I’m aware, it’s the only such confirmation in existence. It’ll cause a sensation when we publish this.”
“That’s wonderful, Herr Professor,” said Martins, who had stayed to listen. “My congratulations.”
“But surely, we’ve known of them before, have we not?” queried Schilling.
“Ah, yes,” said Weiskopf, nodding, “but only in apocryphal stories and legends that could never be verified.”
“Sima Qian speaks of them both in the Records of the Grand Historian,” Schilling pointed out.
“Yes, he does,” Weiskopf agreed, “but he was writing during the Han Dynasty, more than fifteen hundred years after the event. There was no guarantee of reliability without contemporary evidence and verification. This bone was inscribed at the very time, and to think it was not with the others. It was lying just here, by itself. We might have missed it altogether. I wonder how it became separated from all the other.”
“Impossible to say,” said Schilling, with a shrug. “Dropped by someone during the funeral rites, or even by the tomb robbers. Who knows? But at least it isn’t damaged, which is the main thing.”
Martins held out his hand, saying, “I will photograph it, Herr Professor, and put it with the rest,” but Weiskopf shook his head.
“Photograph it by all means, number, and record it as well, but then find a strong specimen bag for it, and bring it back to me. I want to make sure it comes to no harm. Whatever else we may have found here; this plastron is truly and lastingly significant.”
* * *
Within a month of finding what Weiskopf began to call the Mingtiao, the excavation of the Da Yi tomb site was finished. By the first week of September, sterile earth was everywhere; there was nothing more to be found. After a careful evaluation, during which he walked or crawled over every square centimeter of the pit floor, Weiskopf declared the work to be at an end and ordered the pit refilled with the excavated soil, a small mountain of which, more than twice the height of a man, had steadily arisen about ten meters from the rectangular cut. This was tedious and exhausting work which had to be done by hand. A bulldozer would have accomplished the task within thirty minutes at most, but when Weiskopf inquired if one might be available, no one knew what he was talking about. Mr. Wu, therefore, recruited twenty-five additional men to help, and the work progressed with buckets and a brigade of wheelbarrows.
The artifacts were packed into wooden crates under Schilling’s exacting eye. Every one, that is, except the Mingtiao, which Weiskopf kept in a leather bag securely tied around his waist.
“Nothing must happen to it,” he said, when Schilling protested. “I know I’m probably being silly, Eduard, but I feel better knowing it’s with me at all times.”
Schilling grinned. He knew Weiskopf’s little idiosyncrasies, and he was enough of an historian to appreciate the artifact’s importance.
Special care was taken over the ceramics, most of which were wrapped in layers of cloth before being put into their own individual crates made especially for them by a master carpenter in Zhengzhou recommended by the apparently omniscient Mr. Wu. The man spent weeks at the site, measuring each piece with sedulous care before crafting boxes of a perfect fit.
The larger bronze ceremonial vessels, some weighing over a hundred kilos, were protected by wooden frames packed with rice straw before being loaded, along with hundreds of crates and boxes, onto the eight rickety trucks Weiskopf had managed to hire, albeit at prodigal expense.
“I doubt they’ll make it ten kilometers,” grumbled Schilling, staring disapprovingly at the rusty hulks.
“They were all I could find,” said Weiskopf, shrugging. “Let us hope they will survive.”
He and Schilling, grateful the pitiless heat of previous weeks was beginning to diminish, if only slightly, exhausted themselves supervising the work. The arid dust raised by dozens of pairs of feet filled their mouths and nostrils, caking on their lips and in their throats.
“God deliver us from this,” Schilling croaked, one afternoon, as he wiped his mouth after a long drink brought to him by young Lai, employed as water carrier and endlessly energetic in the performance of his duties.
“We shall soon be ready,” said Weiskopf, patting Schilling on the shoulder. “Have courage. I have heard from the shipping agents in Tianjin, and they will be waiting for us. We will take the train to Beijing, and then on to Tianjin. I have our tickets and permissions to travel, as well as the freight certificates from the local authorities. I’ve received the necessary export license for the artifacts from the Academia Sinica, so all is now prepared.”
He spoke lightly of the bureaucratic tangle through which he had been obliged to navigate, but in reality, it had been a long and arduous journey. At each step of the way, payments were needed to guarantee the next door would be opened. The travel and freight papers had been the most complicated items and had taken the longest to finalize. Obtaining appointments to see the dignified and urbane scholars at the Academia had cost a minor fortune, all of which disappeared into the pockets of clerks, secretaries, and other underlings. With smiles and cordial bows, the governing officials reminded him of his promise to return everything he was being allowed to take away. He reaffirmed his agreement as the small, red seals with their special characters were stamped on the certificates.
“I trust we will be safe on route,” said Schilling, a note of concern in his voice, after Weiskopf had explained these things to him. “Lawless behavior has increased this summer.”
“There are bandits hereabouts, all right,” said Weiskopf, “but the Guomindang army keeps them in their place.”
“Well,” Schilling grunted, wiping his forehead and replacing his hat, “that may be so, but I am not a great admirer of Chiang Kai-shek or his army. He has been in power since …what…?”
“Nineteen-twenty-eight,” Weiskopf supplied, and Schilling nodded.
“The last five years, yes, but he strikes me as little better than the warlords he replaced, and in our time here we have seen many a local thug come and go, haven’t we?”
“The communists continue to establish themselves,” said Weiskopf, accepting a drink from Lai. “Would you prefer them to the Nationalists?”
“I would prefer to go home,” said Schilling, “before I have to deal with either of them. China is going to fall to pieces, and I have no desire to be here when it does.”
“We shall be on our way very soon,” chuckled Weiskopf, “but, tell me, what will you have to complain about once you get home?”
Schilling, ignoring the gentle jibe, continued. “My brother has written to me to say the National Socialists have come to power, led by Adolph Hitler. He is the man for Germany now, Aaron. He will restore us to our position of prominence and tear up the Versailles Treaty once and for all. I am looking forward to seeing what he can do.”
“Ah yes, Corporal Hitler,” said Weiskopf, in an almost musing tone. “He used to hang wallpaper, I believe. Admirable preparation for national office, wouldn’t you say?”
Schilling grunted again.
“My brother says he’s doing things to give people jobs and restore social order.”
“And I understand he and his SA Storm Troopers were responsible for much of the disorder in the first place,” said Weiskopf. “Street riots, beatings, and God knows what besides. Is that the Germany you’re looking forward to?”
Schilling ignored the question. In a dogmatic tone of voice, he repeated, “I believe Hitler is what Germany needs.” To Weiskopf he sounded as if he were reading from a script.
“Someone has to take charge, Aaron. Surely you must see that. Someone has to lead. Hindenburg can’t live much longer. The old ideas and the outmoded class structure no longer serve us.”
This was rapidly becoming something of a tirade, and Weiskopf sought to calm the waters.
“Well, we shall see,” he said. “All in good time, I think?”
“Excuse me, sir,” said a young Chinese man who had appeared at Weiskopf’s side, “all is finished.”
“Excellent,” said Weiskopf, with a smile. “Eduard, see that the men we no longer need are paid what we owe them, and then we shall be off.”
The graduate students from Leipzig had been invited by the Academia to spend four weeks in Beijing participating in a series of colloquia and lectures on ancient Chinese history, and they came to say their goodbyes before driving off in a hired car.
“I shall miss them,” said Weiskopf, waving. “Especially young Martins. He’s a brilliant lad. At least we shall see them again once we are home.”
After speeches of farewell and a long series of personal goodbyes to young Lai, Mr. Wu, and Mr. Wu’s numerous family and associates, all of whom had travelled from Zhengzhou for this occasion, Weiskopf and Schilling, replete with parting gifts, climbed into the battered Ford to begin the long journey homeward. A journey Weiskopf would later describe as a tragedy and a nightmare.