The text, written on the back of an official document, traces back to the Tang Dynasty (618-907 AD), said Zhu Yuqi, an anthropologist with Xinjiang Normal University in Urumqi.

"The text is fragmentary but some characters are legible, including the words for 'water,' 'go upstream' and the name of Cen Derun, a noted poet of the Southern Dynasty (420-589 AD)," Zhu said on Tuesday.

After they put the characters together, Zhu and his colleagues were able to translate the text into modern Chinese and found two poems, one of which was Cen's "An Ode to the Fishes" and the other was about the moon, written by an anonymous author.

Scholars believe the sheet was a written assignment by a schoolchild as schools often made students copy classics to enhance their memory and improve their calligraphy.

"On this sheet, every single character was copied three times. The text was seemingly written in ink and with a painting brush - a popular writing implement that was replaced by pens and pencils only after the 1900s," Zhu said.

anyone's attention at the time. Ancient documents were frequently found in Turpan, an important city in the past as cultural exchanges were common between Chinese, Indian, Islamic and Greek civilizations, he added.

However, he said it is unusual that a paper document has been preserved for more than 1,000 years.

The document is being kept at Turpan City Museum and will be exhibited at an upcoming festival scheduled to open on June 28.