Published:  00:00 Wednesday - August 04, 2010

Monument inscriptions in Han Chinese and Nom (old Vietnamese script based on Chinese characters) at the royal citadel in Hue will be submitted to UNESCO for recognition as World Document Heritage.

Phan Thanh Hai, deputy director of the Hue Monuments Conservation Centre, says the Han writing was used in official feudal correspondences. The compilation of the inscriptions and other necessary work will be completed by 2014, and submitted to UNESCO the following year.

The scripts are used for both verse and prose, including thousands of poems and celebratory eulogies carved on palaces, steles, mausoleums and other monuments.
The most notable are poems celebrating spring, which are carved on Ngo Mon (Noon gate) and on the roof of Thai Hoa Palace.

Other highlights are a series of gilded poems in the palace presumably written by a number of kings about the country's independence, sovereignty, peace and prosperity.
One of the poems is seen as a declaration of independence by the Nguyen dynasty, the country's last feudal regime.

Historians and experts said the poems were an important part of the Hue’s soul when it was the royal capital of the country.