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| 0312 |
On Ancient Central-Asian Tracks : vol.1 |
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OCR Text
(Fig. 75) written on paper in that Early Sogdian language
and script of which before my second expedition nothing
was known. A few were found wrapped up in silk covers
while others were merely fastened with string. The decipher-
ment of these letters, a difficult task owing to the very cur-
sive script and for other reasons, has now shown that they
contained private communications apparently of traders
visiting China from Central Asia. They must obviously
have preferred the newly invented writing material, paper,
to the wooden slips and tablets to which Chinese con-
servatism clung.
The microscopical examination made by the late Pro-
fessor Von Wiesner, a leading authority on the history of
paper-making, has proved that the material of these letters
represents the earliest paper hitherto known. It was pre-
pared from hemp textiles reduced to pulp exactly in the
fashion which Chinese texts record as having been used for
paper when it was first invented in A.D. 105. The discovery
of these letters and of some paper fragments elsewhere on
the Limes is in full accord with the fact that the latter can
be proved by dated documents to have been guarded down
to the middle of the second century A.D., except along its
westernmost section. This appears to have been abandoned
in the first quarter of the first century of our era during the
troubled times of the usurper Wang Mang.
A retrenchment of the Limes made early in the first cen-
tury A.D. is clearly marked by a later and less solid transverse
wall running south from about the middle of the 'marsh
section'. Just at this point there rises by the caravan route
a ruined square fort of quite imposing appearance (Fig.
73). Its walls of stamped clay, fully fifteen feet thick at the
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561
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571
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578
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