# Guodian Chu tomb bamboo slips include three Laozi bundles

Date: 1993

## The fact

In 1993 a Chu tomb at Guodian, Jingmen, yielded bamboo slips later published as Guodian Laozi A, B and C, covering a subset of received chapters in a different arrangement. The dated public instrument is the excavation and the 1990s scholarly publication. No slip names Li Er as author.

## Context

Partial bundles undercut the picture of a single 5,000-character autograph. They also undercut the claim that the book is only a Han invention.

[Laozi](/people/laozi) is not the sole author of every later object, law, or museum label that uses the name. Shared work with courts, excavators, printers, spouses, officials, and later states does not erase a documented role, and it does not make an ancient person the signer of a twentieth-century statute.

## Evidence and sources

PRC English archive reporting and the IEP Laozi article independently describe Guodian as a late-fourth-century BCE tomb find published in the 1990s.

Official or archival record: PRC English archive pages on provincial cultural finds (https://english.www.gov.cn/archive/china_abc/; State Council of the People’s Republic of China).

## Significance

Knowledge-access path. High confidence on the find; medium on any philosophical ‘original’ reconstructed from three bundles.

Partial chapters are not a missing autobiography. Do not fill the gaps with Sima Qian.

## What is established and what is not

Established: Guodian included Laozi-related bundles excavated in 1993. Not established: a complete ur-text or a named author on the slips.

What would change the picture: a contradictory original with a different date or name, or a measured series that can be argued, with lag and alternatives, as a consequence of this instrument rather than of later institutions.

The date is the date of this instrument, not a licence to back-date every later harm or benefit.
Later competitions, monuments, translations, UNESCO listings, and museums are not converted into extra lifetime acts. The attached driver is edu-[digital-learning-access](/drivers/edu-digital-learning-access). The welfare reading used in this dossier is improving. That reading is an impact-path choice, not a property stored on the Fact itself. Confidence is stated on the impact path. A later English edition is not a recovered autograph. If a number is not in the two records named above, it is not supplied here.

## People

- Laozi: https://factrail.ai/people/laozi

## Drivers

- Digital Learning Access: https://factrail.ai/drivers/edu-digital-learning-access

## Sources

- https://iep.utm.edu/laozi/
- https://english.www.gov.cn/archive/china_abc/

## Methodology

https://factrail.ai/methodology

Canonical: https://factrail.ai/facts/lz-guodian-bamboo-1993