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| Mount Ban relic - where experts conduct excavations |
This information was announced by the excavation team of the National Museum of History on the afternoon of June 16 at the preliminary report on the results of the second phase of excavation at the Department of Culture and Sports. Many leading experts, researchers, and culturalists attended.
Mount Ban relic is considered the Nam Giao altar of the Tay Son dynasty, where Nguyen Hue conducted the ceremony to worship heaven and earth, officially ascending the throne with the name Quang Trung in 1788.
Elucidating the scale and structure
This relic was classified as a National Historic Relic in 1988. This phase 2 excavation is the continuation of the phase 1, which took place in July 2022, and is also undertaken by the National Museum of History. The excavation aims to determine the scale and original structure for conservation work and towards building this relic to become a special national relic.
On the basis of traces of stone and brick embankment discovered in the first phase of excavation, experts have expanded the excavation pits and continued development on the sides to clarify the scale and structure of the altar’s foot. Mr. Nguyen Ngoc Chat, Deputy Head of the Research and Collection Department (National Museum of History), said that with the excavation area being expanded in phase 2 of over 200m2, the stratigraphic changes and the exposed foundation embankment has brought new perceptions and has defined the scale and structure more clearly.
According to Mr. Chat, the whole altar consists of 3 layers in the shape of truncated cones stacked on top of each other, the base is split, cut into corners and edges. In addition to the edges of the altar which are natural cliffs, many positions were built and supplemented with bricks and stones to form an octagonal plan (each side is 32-33m long).
The surface of the first floor is quite wide, the North and East sides are nearly 8m wide. The Western edge narrows to 6.8m and the Southern edge expands to 9.7m. The surface of the 2nd floor edges from 6.5m to 7.1m. Meanwhile, the top floor - the place where Emperor Quang Trung held the ceremony has a round, nearly ovoid shape with a diameter of 19m from North to South, and 17.8m from East to West, and a flat ground surface.
Relics found are sandstones in pale yellow pebble form, or schists in light purple, blue-gray, gray-white colors... interspersed with broken bricks. The age of the brick is determined to be primarily in the 18th century.
“From the obtained results, it can be seen that the Tay Son altar in Mount Ban had a simple construction technique, taking advantage of the natural rocky terrain, being cut and built to form a special scale and structure. This clearly reflects the urgency in building the altar and ascending the throne of Bac Binh Vuong Nguyen Hue," Mr. Chat said. Although in a hurry, the designers at that time still had a sense of planning, bringing harmony, balance and ensuring the theory of the three talents "Heaven - Earth - Human" with 3 upper circular floors on Mount Ban.
There is a difference which carries a profound philosophical element
Compared with the altars of the ancient and medieval period in the world, this shows that the worship altar at Mount Ban is different, mainly based on natural factors, so the work towards construction was not as significant. The octagonal base also has a profound philosophical meaning, such as the ba gua (eight trigrams) in the I Ching or the meaning of "four and eight great passages" - through all four sides throughout all eight sides, demonstrating legitimacy, through heaven and earth.
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| Experts discussing at the preliminary report on the results of the second phase of excavation |
Also in this excavation, experts discovered traces of the staircase to the northwest of the altar. The traces are quite clear, at a fairly large scale. This shows that the Feng Shui element is directly related to the destiny and age of Bac Binh Vuong Nguyen Hue.
From this result, the excavation team suggested that the Department of Culture and Sports should soon prepare documents and build a dossier to request recognition of Mount Ban as a "special national relic", in which, attention should be paid to surveying and assessing the current status of land use and infrastructure in the planning area; determine the boundaries of protected areas I, II, landscape protection zones, restricted areas; orientation to promote the value of relics associated with sustainable tourism development; spatial planning of landscape architecture; forecast environmental impacts and propose measures to protect the environment…
When excavating phase 1, experts have dug 9 pits in four directions of East, West, South and North of the current altar. Depending on each pit, the excavation was dug in different directions. Notably, in the western area, where 5 pits have been opened, there are some original traces such as embankment surface, side slope, surface of the 1st floor and part of the foot of the 2nd floor of the Nam Giao sacrifice altar in Tay Son time. The southern area with a long pit running in the north-south direction, revealing that the original worship altar remains only a fairly flat surface of the first floor, 2m wide with the depth of 0.5m.