Tangut Empire of Xi Xia founded

1038

Li Yuanhao, ruler of the Tanguts on China's northwest frontier, proclaimed himself emperor of the Great Xia and began minting his own coins and devising a written script of nearly six thousand characters. His desert kingdom would harry the Song for two centuries until Mongols erased it from history. The Tangut script was so thoroughly destroyed that scholars could not read it again until the twentieth century.