# Mawangdui tomb 3 yields silk manuscripts of two Laozi recensions

Date: 1973

## The fact

In 1973 excavators of Mawangdui tomb 3 at Changsha recovered silk manuscripts including two [Laozi](/people/laozi) recensions later labelled A and B, with de chapters before dao in one ordering. The tomb occupant is a Han marquis’s kin, not Laozi.

## Context

Before 1973 the received Wang Bi and Heshanggong lines dominated. Silk books showed a living Han text-family. They do not prove a single Spring and Autumn author. They do prove that a Laozi corpus circulated as a book by the early Han.

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

Hunan Museum holds and exhibits the Mawangdui silk books. The Stanford Laozi entry treats the find as a primary modern witness and keeps the authorship problem open.

Official or archival record: Hunan Museum — Mawangdui holdings portal (https://www.hnmuseum.com/; Hunan Museum).

## Significance

Knowledge-access path. High confidence on the excavation, high on the limit that this is not a signed sixth-century file.

A silk book is not a biography. Do not convert the tomb into a vita.

## What is established and what is not

Established: two silk Laozi texts were excavated at Mawangdui in 1973.

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. Later competitions, monuments, translations, UNESCO listings, and museums are not converted into extra lifetime acts. 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://plato.stanford.edu/entries/laozi/
- https://www.hnmuseum.com/

## Methodology

https://factrail.ai/methodology

Canonical: https://factrail.ai/facts/lz-mawangdui-silk-1973