1.5 kilometers southwest of Mancheng County, Baoding City, Hebei Province, there is a small hill with more stones and less soil. Koyama is nameless, and for this reason it is said that the hill is the tomb of an ancient emperor, so it is called "Lingshan".
Lingshan is an isolated hill, adjacent to Baoyang Mountain in the west, distant from Loushan Mountain and Yushan Mountain in the north, and an endless plain on the southeast side. Lingshan itself is composed of three peaks, the main peak and the hills behind it are called dragons and big tents, and the left and right peaks are called green dragons and white tigers.
The blue circle is Mancheng County, Hebei Province, and the red circle is Lingshan Mountain
Standing at the bottom of the mountain, from east to west, the three peaks resemble a Taishi chair, the main peak is the back, the green dragon and the white tiger are the armrests on both sides, facing the place where the sun rises. The ancients were superstitious and believed that burying in a good place could bless future generations with prosperity. Choosing Lingshan as a cemetery is really appropriate.
There are many villages scattered around Lingshan. At the foot of the southeast mountain are Beiling Mountain Village and Nanling Mountain Village. According to the local people, the two villages were originally one village, the village named Lingshan, and then divided into two villages due to the increase in population.
Panoramic view of Lingshan Mountain
There is also a Shouling Village 2,000 meters southeast of Lingshan Mountain, which is also related to the tomb of Lingshan Mountain. In ancient times, the tombs of emperors and princes often had special tomb guards to manage and care for them. Due to the vastness of the cemetery, the number of tomb guards is often hundreds or thousands. Shouling Village should be the village where the farmers guarding the mausoleum lived at that time.
The villagers still pass on the legend that their ancestors showed people graves. But because of the age and the passage of time, whose grave is being cared for? Where is the grave? No one knows anymore.
In May 1968, officers and men of a certain unit of the Chinese People's Liberation Army were carrying out the construction of a military project on the Lingshan Mountain in Mancheng, Hebei Province. During the construction, the crushing belt was encountered, and the construction site avoided the crushing belt and went around, and as soon as the cannon was fired, the stones that were blown up were gone.
The officers and soldiers were very strange, and when they looked at it in the past, there was a big cave underneath, and there were a lot of things. They took out a few pieces, and as soon as they saw that they were cultural relics, they preserved them, and the project immediately stopped and immediately reported to the province. The cultural department of Hebei Province immediately sent two archaeologists to the site for investigation and protection.
The hole that collapsed after firing the cannon
News of the discovery of ancient tombs in the city reached Beijing in mid-June. Premier Zhou Enlai asked Guo Moruo to be responsible for handling this matter, hoping to submit a handling opinion to him as soon as possible.
After Guo Moruo was ordered, he immediately sent someone to the field to understand the situation. Subsequently, a special meeting was held at the Academy of Sciences to study and determine the candidates for participation in archaeological excavations.
Because it involved military engineering, Guo Moruo sent someone to the headquarters of the Beijing Military Region to discuss cooperation. Commander Zheng Weishan made it clear:
1. The vehicles and safety of the archaeological team from Baoding to Mancheng are responsible for the Hebei Provincial Military Region, and the Beijing Military Region sends a staff officer to accompany the archaeological team to Mancheng.
2. In terms of materials, as long as the army can solve it, it must be strongly supported and responsible for solving.
3. Military engineering is completely subordinated to the needs of archaeological excavation work.
After all the preparations were ready, the excavation team jointly composed of the Institute of Archaeology of the Chinese Academy of Sciences and the Hebei Provincial Cultural Relics Task Force officially began the excavation work on June 27, and an important archaeological discovery in the 20th century began, and the obscure city became the focus of the world's attention for a while.
After the excavation work began, in order to save time and prevent the destruction of cultural relics, archaeologists did not rush to open the tomb door, but first entered and exited from the hole that the People's Liberation Army exploded during the construction of the south end of the south ear chamber, until the various cultural relics were cleaned up, and finally opened the tomb door.
PLA soldiers cleared the collapsed stone slabs in the back room
Unlike the popular earthen pit tombs of the Western Han Dynasty, the Mancheng Han Tomb is a rather peculiar cliff tomb.
What is a cliff tomb?
Since the Shang Zhou Dynasty in China, the shape of the tomb system is basically based on the vertical pit tomb, such as the tomb of Cai Hou in Shou County, Anhui Province, and the tomb of Qin in Yunmeng Sleeping Tiger in Hubei Province, which are square and rectangular vertical pit tombs, respectively, while The First Tomb of Mawangdui and the Han Tomb of Fenghuangshan in Jiangling are representatives of the early Western Han Dynasty Vertical Pit Clay Pit Wooden Tomb.
However, the burial chamber of the Mancheng Han Tomb is a huge cave excavated by the mountain, which is different from the traditional tomb form and belongs to the nature of the horizontal cave tomb, which is generally called a cliff tomb.
Cliff Tomb
The reason why Liu Sheng, the king of Zhongshan, the owner of the Mancheng Han Tomb, chose this cliff tomb for burial was probably influenced by his grandfather Emperor Wen of Han.
According to historical records, Liu Sheng's grandfather Emperor Wen of Han's tomb was also a cliff tomb with a mountain as a mausoleum. When Emperor Wen of Han passed through the Baling Tombs, he said to his subordinates, "My tomb is made of Beishan stone, wrapped in silk cotton paint, and it can be kept forever." Minister Zhang Shizhi replied: As long as there is nothing precious in it, even if you do not use a stone rafter, it will not be destroyed. Emperor Wen of Han successively praised the good, and when he later repaired the Tomb, he ordered that the mountains and rivers should not be changed, and that they should not be buried with gold, silver, copper and tin instead of using clay utensils, known as "frugal burial".
The Mancheng Han Tomb is similar to baling, except that Liu Sheng not only buried gold, silver, copper and tin, but also buried many rare treasures.
From the site observation of the base, Liu Sheng first built a road up the mountain before digging the tomb cave, from the southeast foot of the mountain to the east slope of the main peak selected to create the cemetery, these ancient mountain roads are the so-called "race tracks" of the local people.
After the completion of the mountain road, the mountain rock is first excavated in the east-west direction 30 meters from the top of the main peak to create a cliff surface, and after the cliff surface is formed at a certain height, the cave is excavated to create a burial chamber.
At the same time, in the part of the gap between the adobe of the closed door, condensed spilled molten iron was found, indicating that the sealing door of the tomb was tied between the two adobe walls to be filled with dissolved molten iron, cast into an iron door, and then filled with stones outside the door.
Schematic diagram of the roof door of Tomb No. 1
This is exhaustive, of course, for the purpose of anti-theft.
The tomb of Liu Sheng is 51.7 meters long, 37.5 meters at the widest point, 6.8 meters at the highest point, and has a volume of about 2700 cubic meters.
The tomb of Liu Sheng's wife, Dou Qi, is 49.7 meters long, 65 meters at the widest point, 7.9 meters at the highest point, and has a volume of nearly 3,000 square meters.
The two tombs are basically the same, and are divided into six parts: the tomb passage, the Yongdao, the south ear chamber, the north ear chamber, the middle chamber and the rear chamber.
The Yongdao is immediately followed by the tomb passage, on both sides of which is a symmetrical north and south ear chamber, followed by a large and almost square middle chamber, with a stone gate between the middle chamber and the back chamber, the back chamber of Liu Sheng's tomb is behind the middle chamber, and the back chamber of Dou Xuan's tomb is on the right side of the middle chamber.
From the excavation phenomenon, the Yongdao, South Ear Chamber, North Ear Chamber and Middle Chamber of Liu Sheng's Tomb, as well as the Middle Chamber of Dou Xuan's Tomb, originally built a wooden structure house with a tile roof in the cave room, which later collapsed due to wood decay.
Floor plan of Liu Sheng's tomb
The back chambers of both tombs are stone houses made of stone slabs in the cave, with three parts: the doorway, the main chamber and the side chamber. A cloister was also excavated in the back room surrounding Liu Sheng's tomb. There are drainage facilities inside the tomb.
The top of each chamber of the two tombs is arched or domed, and the walls of the chambers are hewn into an arc, and no structural form of straight walls and right angles intersecting is found. After more than 2,000 years, the tomb is basically well preserved, which may be related to the fact that its excavation form conforms to mechanical principles.
Judging from the excavation of burial artifacts in each burial chamber, the north and south ear chambers are the storehouse and the carriage and horse room, the middle room is a large hall, and the back room is the inner chamber that symbolizes the bedroom.
This kind of cave tomb imitating the master's palace house has obvious epochality, it is later than the rectangular wooden tomb common in the early Western Han Dynasty in China, and earlier than the multi-chamber brick tomb and stone chamber tomb that existed in the late Western Han Dynasty and the Eastern Han Dynasty.
Clean up the middle chamber of Liu Sheng's tomb
In terms of the coffin system, the old ritual system of the "five-fold coffins of the princes" in the early Western Han Dynasty in China was changed, using one coffin and one coffin and a jade lacquer coffin. In terms of burial customs, it belongs to the husband and wife and bury together, that is, the so-called "same grave and different burial", which is different from the system of joint burial in the same cave that gradually became popular in the late Western Han Dynasty.
The well-designed burial chamber, the project is arduous and the scale is grand. Digging such a huge burial chamber in the rock is a modern construction method, and it is estimated that it will take hundreds of people about a year.
It can be imagined that under the technical conditions of more than 2,000 years ago, the manual excavation using hammers and brazes must have consumed manpower, material resources and time, which must be very amazing.