Many rare bricks at the temple of the first-ranking scholar Ho Hung Dat

Ancient history records that: Ho Hung Dat was originally from Zhejiang, passed the imperial examinations in the Later Han Dynasty, and was appointed as the Governor of Dien Chau (now 3 districts: Yen Thanh, Dien Chau, Quynh Luu). He was a person who contributed a lot to this land, so when he died, people in many places built temples to worship him. He was also the person who formed a noble and powerful family in Vietnam.

In 1403, the Ho King at that time, Ho Han Thuong (1338-1407), built a temple to worship his ancestor Ho Hung Dat and his ancestors. Later, when King Ho Quy Ly, Ho Han Thuong and Princess Bach Y (daughter of Ho Quy Ly) passed away, the people and descendants of the Ho family brought them to worship at the temple. The name King Ho Temple has been around since then.

In the past,templeThe temple has a very large scale, with a layout in the style of "inner public, outer private", including many structures such as: Worshiping Hall, Lower Hall, Middle Hall, Upper Hall, Left Vu, Right Vu, bell tower, drum tower... Through the vicissitudes of history, natural disasters and wars, the temple's structures were buried one by one. In 2005, the temple was restored on the old foundation.

During the process of digging the foundation to restore the works, local people and their descendants discovered many remaining vestiges of the ancient temple such as stone foundations, floor tiles, roof tiles, stone steps, stone dragon heads, etc.

The artifacts of the temple were scattered in many places, some were brought to Nghe An Museum, some were brought to the Traditional Room of Quynh Luu District, some were kept by families in the area or their descendants. As soon as the project was completed and put into use, for many reasons, some valuable artifacts were returned to the temple by families.

Among those artifacts, we were most impressed by the floor tiles because of their bright colors and unique, eye-catching decorative patterns. The tiles were made of baked clay, measuring 38cm x 38cm, 8cm thick, with a total of 10 tiles, some of which were broken. The center of the tile was decorated with a chrysanthemum shape with a raised circle in the middle, surrounded by more circles but with a smaller raised cross-section, followed by stylized chrysanthemum petals. The outermost layer was decorated with two layers of water wave patterns on all four sides, forming a square that surrounded the chrysanthemum. Adjacent to the water wave pattern, on the four sides, there were half circles and half chrysanthemums. With this shape, when combined with other tiles, new chrysanthemums were created on the four sides. At the same time, the other half circles also combined to form a stylized diamond on each tile.

Observing the patterns on the bricks, researcher Dao Tam Tinh said: "The patterns on these bricks are typical of Tran Dynasty bricks." This is also easy to explain, because the temple was built in 1403, at that time, the Ho Dynasty had just been established and the mark of the Tran Dynasty in all aspects was still strong, including the art of pottery.

Surprisingly, after more than 600 years of existence, including being buried underground for a time, the bricks still retain almost intact both color and pattern. This shows that the pottery making ability of ancient artisans has reached a master level, many details in the brick making process such as the ratio of raw materials, firing temperature... are still unknown to many scientists, researchers and even today's ceramic artisans.

In addition to the 10 bricks mentioned above, the temple also preserves a part of the corner of the knife - decorated with leaf patterns and 16 stone bases of different sizes, the largest base is 0.35m high, 0.6m x 0.6m side. These are truly rare antiques in Nghe An province.