Tsinghua Bamboo Slips

The Tsinghua Bamboo Slips (simplified Chinese: 清华简; traditional Chinese: 清華簡; pinyin: Qīnghuá jiăn) are a collection of Chinese texts dating to the Warring States period and written in ink on strips of bamboo, that were acquired in 2008 by Tsinghua University, China. The texts were obtained by illegal excavation, probably of a tomb in the area of Hubei or Hunan province, and were then acquired and donated to the university by an alumnus. The very large size of the collection and the significance of the texts for scholarship make it one of the most important discoveries of early Chinese texts to date.

On 7 January 2014 the journal Nature announced that some Tsinghua Bamboo Slips represent "the world's oldest example" of a decimal multiplication table.

The Tsinghua Bamboo Slips (TBS) were donated to Tsinghua University in July 2008 by an alumnus of the university. The precise location(s) and date(s) of the illicit excavation that yielded the slips remain(s) unknown. An article in the Guangming Daily named the donor as Zhao Weiguo (赵伟国), and stated that the texts were purchased at "a foreign auction", Neither the name of the auction house, nor the location or sum involved in the transaction were mentioned. Li Xueqin, the director of the conservation and research project, has stated that the wishes of the alumnus to maintain his identity secret will be respected.

Similarities with previous discoveries, such as the manuscripts from the Guodian tomb, indicate that the TBS came from a mid-to-late Warring States Period (480–221BC) tomb in the region of China culturally dominated at that time by the Chu state. A single radiocarbon date (305±30BC) and the style of ornament on the accompanying box are in keeping with this conclusion. By the time they reached the university, the slips were badly affected by mold. Conservation work on the slips was carried out, and a Center for Excavated Texts Research and Preservation was established at Tsinghua on April 25, 2009. There are 2388 slips altogether in the collection, including a number of fragments.

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