Cultural heritage officials in the northwest China province of Gansu announced Wednesday that their recent discovery of a centuries-old earthenware pot containing more than 500 kilograms of copper coins.

The coins were of more than 20 varieties and most of them were cast in the Northern Song Dynasty, between 960 and 1127, said Zhao Zuobin, an official with the Kongtong district museum of Pingliang city, where the heritage was found.

"All the coins were ingrained with Chinese characters in different fonts and indicated the years in which they were made," he added.

Zhao said the coins were first discovered by a teacher named Li Deji in Beihoujie street on June 1.

"Some coins were already dug out by construction workers who were there to lay an electrical cable, but no one paid any attention until Li passed by," he said.

Li, out of an intuition the coins could be valuable, reported immediately to the local cultural heritage authorities, who later dug out the whole pot of money, the third of its kind reported so far in the region.

According to Zhao, the previous two pots of coins, also from the Northern Song Dynasty, were unearthed in Kongtong district in 1975 and 2000 respectively. "The first one contained 1,500 kilograms of coins and the second one 600 kilograms," said Zhao.

The amounts suggested the local people must have been rather well-off in history, but had been forced to hide their cash away for fear of losing it in wars, he added.

Zhao and his colleagues will air-dry the coins, sort them out and keep them at the museum for researchers to study into the calligraphy, culture as well as the economic and military development in the region 1,000 years ago.
 
(Xinhua News Agency June 10, 2004)