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3 kilometers east of huixian city, there is a larger village called Guyuan Village. The eastern part of The village is a vast plain, about 1 kilometer away from the village, and a high ground gradually rises, with a vast area of about 600 meters. The eastern, northern and southern sides of this highland are all cliffs and ancient roads, and only the west side is a slow slope. In the center of the highlands, a platform-type highland protrudes, 150 meters wide from east to west and 135 meters long from north to south. The form is rectangular. The platform-type highlands are cliffs on all four sides, and are about 2 meters high. On the cliff, there are occasional traces of plate construction, which seems to be a city foundation. According to this, the local people passed it on as the ancient communist city, calling it "the city". However, if you stand in the middle of the highlands when the rain is clear, look at the far horizon, look north to Fangshan, east to Huanghua Mountain, west to Sumen Mountain, sumen mountain gushing out of the Weihe spring, south to the east, through the northeast of Xinxiang, forming a huge landscape painting with a radius of more than 30 miles, surrounded by mountains and water, majestic, the surrounding scenery, vivid, and very much like the ancient feng shui depicted in the treasure land of the yin house. So, what is its true face? It was excavated in 1950 by the Institute of Archaeology of the Chinese Academy of Sciences. Yes, it is indeed not an ancient city, but a cemetery of the Wei kings in the middle of the Warring States period, which is a "Hui" type cemetery based on Gangpo and slightly artificially built. Moreover, just inside this mausoleum, a piece of news broke out: from the tomb there was conclusive evidence of the successful use of iron in china in batches.
Travel back in time to the 1930s.
In the spring of 1937, the archaeological team of the former Academia Sinica learned that someone had stolen antiquities from the tomb in the east of Guyuan Village, Hui County, and quickly rushed to excavate them. Unfortunately, the excavation work had just begun, and it had to be hurriedly ended due to the outbreak of the War of Resistance, and the excavation was stopped at a depth of only 3.8 meters.
14 years later, after the establishment of the Institute of Archaeology of the New Chinese Academy of Sciences, it went to Liulige in Huixian County to conduct large-scale comprehensive archaeological excavations. Comrade Guo Baojun of the Institute of Archaeology participated in the excavation of the cemetery in Guyuan Village in 1937, and the failure to complete the excavation has always been a heart disease, and it is often regretted that it has not been fully realized. Therefore, when I went to The Liuli Pavilion in Hui County this time to excavate, I still felt that there was a need for a thorough cleanup of the cemetery in Guyuan Village. Therefore, it is recommended to rediscover. After the project budget was submitted to Beijing, the leaders of the Academy of Sciences and the Institute of Archaeology were extremely supportive. As a result, the cemetery of Guyuan Village has also become one of the focuses of excavations in Hui County.
On October 25, 1950, excavations officially began. The participants included Guo Baojun, Su Bingqi, Zhao Quan, Ma Dezhi and Wei Shanchen. The excavations ended on 8 January 1951 and took 76 days. A total of three large tombs No. 1, 2 and 3 and two medium-sized funerary tombs were excavated.
After the excavation of the tomb, after discussion, it was determined that the cemetery belonged to the tomb of the King of Wei in the middle of the Warring States period. Its role and value were very pleasing to the comrades, because it was the highest standard group of Wei tombs known at present, and it was of great significance for examining the burial system of the high-ranking nobles in the Three Jins region at that time.
The three large tombs are juxtaposed on a platform, facing north and south. The largest tomb No. 2 is centered, while the slightly smaller Tomb 3 and Tomb 1 are opposite to each other. On the west side are two funerary tombs side by side, north and south. From the size of the tomb, it is speculated that these three large tombs should be the tombs of the king and queen of Wei. The tomb was originally covered with a hall building, and its base site is slightly larger than the tomb. The site of Tomb No. 2, including the surrounding gravel scattered water, is 27.5 meters long on each side, and is now piled up with tile layers about half a meter thick. According to the remaining pillar foundations, the hall was originally a square tile-roofed building with four corners and a pointed roof in seven bays. Tomb No. 3 is 19 meters long on each side, and each side of Tomb No. 1 is about 18 meters long, both of which are five-bay buildings, and their scale is evident.
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The excavation of the tomb has yielded many unprecedented gains, added a lot of new knowledge, and learned about many burial systems. To sum up, there are the following aspects: First, the structure of the tomb. In addition to the two funerary tombs, the burial chambers of the three large tombs are more complex, and through excavation, the process and method of their construction are clear. In particular, the width of the tomb passages is greater than the width of the burial chamber, and a magnificent situation unfolds in front of the tomb, a form that has never been found before in China. The second is the sand accumulation system. Before this excavation, hundreds of pre-Qin tombs had been excavated in northern Henan, and their sealing methods, more particularly, were sealed with rammed earth. In the late Warring States period, there were stones or charcoal deposits. But like these three large tombs sealed with a large amount of fine sand, it is the first time it has been discovered. The third is rammed earth technology. Plate rammed earth is a traditional method in the history of Chinese architecture. But it is gradual. For example, the Yin Dynasty rammed soil layer in the Liulige ruins, the soil layer is very thin, the rammed nest is very shallow, each layer is only about 5 centimeters, and the rammed earth seen in the Anyang Yin Ruins is larger, and the rammed nest is about 10 centimeters per layer. Yanxiadu (the site of the capital city of the Yan state in the middle and late Warring States period. The rammed earth layers in the southeast of present-day Yixian County, Hebei Province, each layer is 18 cm thick and 1.8 meters long. The thickness of the rammed earth layer of these three tombs can reach 20 centimeters and reach 20 to 30 meters, and such a large-scale rammed earth building marks a progress in Chinese construction technology. The fourth is the temple system. In the tombs of the Shang Dynasty, the form of the ground top of the tomb is said to be "accumulating the remaining soil on it", "the tomb without the grave", (see "Li Ji Tan Bow") that is, after the person dies and is buried, only the remaining soil is gathered on the tomb, without adding another mound of soil. The grave of those who accumulate soil to form a pile is called a grave. A tomb without a grave is not a pile of soil on the tomb. By the time of the Zhou Dynasty, there were tombs on the tombs, but due to their age, the wind and windbrushes were mostly gone. And these three large tombs, all circled a square stone foundation on the top of the burial chamber, placed regular stone foundations, and built a temple of great scale with long barrel tiles and slab tiles, which had never been encountered before. Fifth, the side acupuncture system. Before the excavation of this cemetery, among the other Warring States tombs seen in China (most of which were small tombs), some of them dug a small niche on the top side of the tomb wall of the rafter (the large coffin that was set outside the coffin in ancient times), and several pieces of pottery were placed inside. However, this habit is rarely seen and the niches are extremely small. The three tombs are different, and on the east wall of Tomb No. 1, there is a deep cave with many items buried inside. On the east wall of the two funerary tombs, there is a cave, in addition to the burial supplies, there is also a human skeleton, which is a new phenomenon that has never been seen in previous excavations. The sixth is the system of burying jade. The ancients were filial to the death of their own ancestors by "cautiously pursuing the distant future". And to be filial piety, it is necessary to make sacrifices every year. This is something that is already clear. But how the offerings were handled, I hadn't seen them before. In this excavation, two earth pits were found in the southeast corner of the upper entrance of Tomb No. 1, in which a large number of jade artifacts were buried. It has been learned from this that when the ancients sacrificed with jade, they dug up the soil and buried it, and it was so small that they could only bury things and could not bury people. Shallow but not deep, spanning the tomb and not far from the tomb. This is also the first time that the system of sacrificing and burying jade has been discovered. The seventh is the skill of the zi smith. The animal ring coffin nails on the coffin wall are very cleverly made. The trapezoidal mortise is used to squeeze into the coffin wall, and the inner end of the coffin nail is larger than the outer end, so that the tighter the coffin is lifted, the more it is pulled, the more solid it is, which shows its unique ingenuity. Other structures such as coffins, bamboo grates, small bronze nail ring structures, etc., are diverse and complex. These all show the degree of progress in the skills of zi smiths in the Warring States period. Eighth, lacquerware is prevalent. Red patent leather has been encountered in previously excavated tombs, but it is all fragmentary, and the paint layer is very thin, without multiple layers of color. The lacquer on the coffin of the tomb this time is as thick as a copper coin, and the surface is vermilion and the inside is black. The exterior is also painted with colorful ornaments of yellow and purple, which are splendid and beautiful, giving people a sense of extreme beauty. This in turn indicates that the lacquering process at that time reached a high degree of development. Nine is the exquisiteness of metalworking. The pre-Qin era was the bronze age, generally advocating bronze, bronze ware is large, large, large, ornamental beauty. However, the ornamentation on the bronzes, except for the occasional turquoise inlay, is mostly monochrome bronze. What was unearthed this time was gold and silver wrong car and horse decorated with heterochromatic metal, dragon painting phoenix, yellow and white suitable. There is also a small shop head with a ring and two pieces of utensils with handles, the craftsmanship of which is wrong gold and silver. In particular, the inlaid jade gilded belt hook excavated from the funerary tomb is rich and exquisite, which is a masterpiece of metalworking at that time. These are enough to represent the highest achievements of gold and silver handicraft in the country at that time.
Source: "The History of Gongcheng" by Zhang Youxin
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