The goal of this project is to visually map the 'journeys' or movements of about 150 extant jade objects across time and space. Additionally, each jade object has a multitude of texts published about each, including, but not limited to the poems incised on the jade objects themselves, poems, and essays in the officially published Imperial Poems(御製詩), and another historical source titled Illustrated Records of the Imperial Emperor and Western Regions(欽定皇輿西域圖志) in various volumes even after Emperor Qianlong's Reign. For this project, we will be drawing text analysis from the incised object's poems, the Imperial Poems, and supplemented by the Illustrated Records(欽定皇輿西域圖志).

Text Comparison and Analysis

Below is the text comparison between what we refer to as 'Object Text' and the notes added in blue from the Published Text in the Imperial Poems(御製詩). The 'Object Text' is the poems as incised by Emperor Qianlong directly onto the object. Where the two texts are identical, text is written in black, while the differences in Jade 001's published poems is indicated in blue - a series of notes added into the officially published poem. Comparing the published printed text and the inscribed text reveals that they are not identical, and the same text could be inscribed onto multiple objects from different places around the Islamic world.