Taipei Times
Date: Jun 25, 2019
By: Liu Wan-chun and Jonathan Chin / Staff reporter, with staff writer
An X-ray analysis of an imperial inscription at the Tainan Confucius Temple revealed an older
I-Kuan Tao College professor of conservation science Lin Ren-chen inspects a Qing Dynasty imperial inscription and an X-ray of characters hidden beneath its surface in Tainan yesterday.
Photo: Liu Wan-chun, Taipei Times
I-Kuan Tao College professor of conservation science Lin Ren-chen (林仁政) told a news conference that he was scanning the temple’s inscribed boards as part of routine repairs when a second inscription was identified on the one with an emperor’s dedication that hangs over the main hall.
The surface inscription “shengxie shizong” (聖協時中) is what emperor Daoguang (道光) used to mark his ascension to the throne in 1820, but the older inscription beneath it, which reads “tianheng baozhao” (天衡保軸), belonged to his predecessor, Jiaqing (嘉慶), Lin said.
The four-character moral exhortations are used to date the items because they were commissioned by emperors to mark special occasions that were events of record, he said. [FULL STORY]
