Picturing the PastInscribed Bamboo Slips In 1993 Chinese archaeologists discovered a late-fourth-century- B.C.E. tomb in Hubei province that contained 804 bamboo slips bearing some 12,000 Chinese characters. Scholars have been able to reconstruct more than a dozen books from them, many of them previously unknown. (Private Collection/Archives Charmet/The Bridgeman Art Library)ANALYZING THE IMAGE Can you spot any repeated characters? Can you see any very simple characters?CONNECTIONS What were the consequences of recording texts on bamboo or wooden strips? How might doing so have shaped reading and writing in Zhou times? For modern archaeologists who discover these texts in tombs, would the medium used pose any challenges?