Temple of Literature’s steles recognized as world heritage documents

The stone steles at Hanoi’s Van Mieu-Quoc Tu Giam (Temple of Literature) were recognized as world heritage documents on March 9 at a UNESCO’s meeting in Macau.
Along with the Nguyen Dynasty wood blocks, the Van Mieu doctoral steles are the second world heritage documents of recognized by UNESCO. This is great news for Hanoi before its 1000th anniversary this October.
The 82 stone steles at the Temple of Literature provide information about candidates who received their doctorates. The steles were carved with the names of 2,313 doctors who passed court examinations between 1484 and 1780 under the Late Le, Mac, Trinh and Nguyen dynasties.
Every stele was built after doctoral examinations given by the Vietnamese courts. Every stele is a database of all information related to the examination, including time, number of contestant and profile of the successful doctors.
The stone steles are a precious treasure of Vietnam’s educational history, providing not only general information about education in Vietnam within the last 300 years, but also specific details about the dynastic examination systems.