There is a pair of very inconspicuous bells in China Gallery of ROM. But the inscription on the bells makes them famous.
In fact, these are the 4th and 8th pieces in a set of bells. The other 12 pieces are in the Sen’oku Hakukokan Museum in Japan. The inside of the top of the bells is engraved with serial numbers. The nine smaller bells have inscription "Biao's Bell", and the five larger bells are each engraved with the same 61-character historical fact: In the 22nd year of the reign of an emperor of Zhou Dynasty, there was a retainer of Han Jun of Jin Kingdom named Biao Qiang. General Biao followed the monarch as a vanguard and conquered Qin and Qi successively returning with great victories. Now carving this story on this set of bells to never be forgotten.
This period of history confirms the "Three Jin Conquering Qi" event recorded in historical books. But the research process is extremely complicated. Bells have attracted the attention of academic circles as soon as it was unearthed. Everyone had different opinions on the interpretation of these 61 characters and could not reach a consensus. Let me tell you about the research on the word " emperor of Zhou" below, then you can imagine how difficult it is to research the full text.
Scholars wanted to know which emperor of Zhou this is, because there were 24 emperors in the Zhou Dynasty, and there were 12 emperors reign over 22 years. Scholars finally locked down the emperor from 12 to 2 based on the fact that Han Jun was called Han Zong instead of Han Hou. They knew that Han had not been confirmed as a vassal state. Scholars also based on fragmentary records in "Lv Shi Chun Qiu", "Huainan Zi", "Shui Jing Zhu", "Bamboo Book Annals" and other books, and finally set the year as King Weilie of Zhou Dynasty in 404 BC. Coincidentally, this historical event was discovered in a batch of Warring States bamboo slips in 2008. Then the emperor of Zhou was finalized.
Archeology really requires carefulness, logic and patience!