Western Mesh Silk Road Heritage
The 11 tombs of the Western Han Dynasty, except for the Tomb of Emperor Wen on the White Deer Plain in the eastern suburbs of Xi'an, and the Tomb of Emperor Xuan on the Shaoling Plain in the southern suburbs of Xi'an, the remaining 9 tombs are on the Xianyang Plain on the north bank of the Wei River in xi'an. Because of this, Xianyangyuan was regarded as a treasure of feng shui by successive rulers and became the first choice for royal tombs.
The 9 Tombs of Weibei span more than 50 kilometers from east to west, from Maoling Village, a township in the northeast of Xingping City, Xianyang City in the west, to Zhangjiawan in Zhengyang Town, Weicheng District, Xianyang City, and in the north of Hougou Village in the east, on the Xianyang Plains, the tombs of Emperor Liu Chemao of the Han Dynasty, the Tomb of Liu Fuling of the Han Zhao Emperor, the Tomb of Liu Xiaoyan of the Hancheng Emperor, the Mausoleum of Liu Yankang of the Han Ping Emperor, the Mausoleum of The Han Yuan Emperor Liu Yiwei, the Tomb of Liu Xinyi of the Han Dynasty, the Mausoleum of Liu Ying'an of the Han Hui Emperor, the Tomb of Liu Bang of the Han Gao Emperor, and the Tomb of Liu Qiyang of the Han Jing Emperor.
Schematic diagram of the distribution of the tombs of the Eleventh Emperor of the Western Han Dynasty
In the Western Han Tombs, the 10 tombs are built with tall bucket-shaped tombs on the ground. The mound is generally 150 to 200 meters long at the bottom and about 20 to 30 meters high at the top. The emperors of the Han Dynasty were buried together in different mausoleums, and most of the tombs were in the east of the imperial tombs, and the tomb mounds were smaller than the imperial tombs, but the size of the tombs of Lü Hou was almost equal to that of the tombs of Gao Zu Changling. Starting from the Yangling Tomb, a square rammed earth wall was built around the tomb of the Empress, with a gate in the center of each wall, and a double gate outside the door. This kind of square cemetery surrounding the tomb mound is the general system of the Western Han Dynasty Empress Mausoleum. A sleeping hall and a temple were built next to the cemetery.
The funerary tombs of the Western Han Dynasty are all in the east of the imperial tombs, and the Changling funerary tombs are the largest. These imperial tombs, together with the funeral tombs of the emperor's relatives and state relatives and powerful ministers, stretch from east to west for hundreds of miles, just as the ancient poem says: "Changling is high and this An Liu, and the burial is full of marquises."
Changling is the mausoleum of Liu Bang, the ancestor of Han Gao, located in Yiwei Village, Zhengyang Town, Weicheng District, Xianyang City. Changling "one hundred and twenty steps from east to west, thirteen meters high, in the north of Weishui, to Chang'an thirty-five miles." At present, the bottom of the measurement is 153 meters long from east to west, 135 meters wide from north to south, 55 meters from east to west at the top, 35 meters from north to south, and 32.8 meters high, which is similar to the historical records. Changling is also known as "Changshan" or "Changling Mountain". The name "Changling" may be related to the ancient name of the location "Changping" or "Changping Han".
Some emperors of the Western Han Dynasty also built the tombs of their fathers or mothers according to the specifications of the imperial tombs, or buried them with the etiquette of emperors and empresses, such as the tombs of the Han Emperor Taishang, the Southern Tomb of Empress Bo, the Yunling Tomb of Lady Hook Yi, and the tombs of Emperor Xuan's parents, Emperor Shi Huangsun and Lady Wang. These mausoleums are either near the Imperial Tomb Area, or in Gyeonggi Lands outside the Mausoleum Area.
Hanyang Mausoleum, also known as Yangling Tomb, is a joint burial cemetery of the Han Jing Emperor Liu Qi and his empress Wang Shi Tongyi Cave, located in the Xianyang Plains north of Zhangjiawan and Hougou Village in Zhengyang Town, Weicheng District, Xianyang City, Shaanxi Province, spanning the three counties of Weicheng District, Jingyang County, and Gaoling County, Xianyang City. Originally built in 153 BC and completed in 126 BC, the cemetery covers an area of 20 square kilometers and was built for 28 years. Now built hanyang mausoleum museum, is a large-scale cultural tourism scenic spot that skillfully integrates modern science and technology with ancient civilization, history and culture and garden landscape, and is the largest museum in China.
In the early Western Han Dynasty, in order to make the emperor after death not be lonely and lonely, while building a mausoleum for the emperor, it was customary to set up a mausoleum next to the mausoleum, that is, to build a city next to each mausoleum. Moving from all over the country to live in Lingyi became a kind of glory and fashion at that time, and was regarded as a symbol of status and wealth. The population of Maolingyi, known as the "Crown of the Five Tombs", reached 277,000. Xianyang was originally formed into a very densely populated urban agglomeration with highly concentrated wealth.
During the Western Han Dynasty, people firmly believed that the soul did not die, and the wind of thick burial became more and more intense. Emperor Jingdi's brother Liang Xiaowang buried tens of thousands of catties of gold after his death. In this humanistic custom and geographical background, Xianyangyuan has become the mysterious land with the most buried treasures in human history. The emperors took the lead first. According to the Old Book of Tang, "the law of the Han Dynasty, the reign of the king, the three points of tribute under the world, and one point into the mountains and mausoleums." That is to say, the wealth buried in the emperor's mausoleum accounts for one-third of the state's fiscal revenue. According to this ratio, the Western Han Dynasty lasted 210 years, and the wealth buried in the emperor's tomb was equivalent to 70 years of state revenue. Although the emperor's relatives and princes and the rich men of Lingyi were not as generous as the emperors, the number of people increased step by step. In the sum of the three, the wealth buried in the Xianyang Plain is undoubtedly the "world's largest". Although the Han Tombs were stolen and excavated during the late Western Han Dynasty and the Wei and Jin Dynasties, Xianyangyuan is still a huge and mysterious treasure trove of cultural relics.
Among them, Maoling Is the largest, longest-built and most abundant funerary tomb of the Han Dynasty emperors, known as the "Pyramid of China".
Maoling has seven of the most: one is the longest construction period, which lasted 53 years; the second is the largest scale, and there are more than 400 buried pits that have been proven; the third is the largest number of burial items, and when Emperor Wu died and was buried, the burial items in the mausoleum could not be stuffed. That is, the history books say that "there is no room for things"; fourth, the most expensive, the cost of repairing the tomb accounts for one-third of the annual tax during the period of Emperor Wu; fifth, Maoling City is the most prosperous; sixth, the mausoleum area is the most extensive, and dozens of funerary tombs are mostly distinctive; seventh, Maoling itself is the tallest, and is unique among the 11 emperors' tombs in the Western Han Dynasty.
Han Mao Mausoleum is the mausoleum of Liu Che, Emperor Wu of the Western Han Dynasty. It is located in Maoling Village, a township northeast of Xingping City (formerly Xingping County), 40 kilometers northwest of Xi'an City. Now it is a national key cultural relics protection unit. It was built between 139 BC and 87 BC, which lasted 53 years. The mound soil of Maoling tomb is covered in the shape of a bucket, the existing residual height is 46.5 meters, the base side of the bottom of the tomb is 240 meters long, and the cemetery is square, with a side length of about 420 meters. To this day, the soil on the east, west and north sides still exists, and there are still tombs of Lady Li, Wei Qing, Huo Zhiyi, Huo Guang, Jin Ilju and others in the tombs of Lingzhou.
In the early days of liberation, there were more than 800 Han Dynasty mausoleums in Xianyang, and after the large-scale land leveling movement and wind and rain erosion in the 1950s and 1960s, only more than 200 are left. Some of the burial tombs in Changling have been greatly reduced, with some of the bottoms almost hollowed out, and some of them leaving traces of having been dug into brick kilns.
Yang Jun, deputy director of the Xianyang Municipal Bureau of Cultural Relics and Tourism, said frankly that man-made destruction is a major threat to the protection of cultural relics, and production activities such as cultivating farmland, leveling land, building roads, and building township enterprises, as well as daily life behaviors such as the reconstruction and expansion of homesteads, soil extraction, domestic garbage dumping, and the construction of modern people's graves, have caused different degrees of damage to the site. In addition, natural weathering such as acid rain, severe cold and heat, and northwest wind has also damaged the site.
"In particular, the phenomenon of tomb repair has been found in Changling, Yanling, Pingling, and Kangling, with Yanling being the most serious, and the surrounding modern tombs can reach nearly a thousand, and some have been repaired to the foot of the Yanling sealing soil, causing great damage to the integrity of the imperial tomb." Liu Junmin, deputy dean of the School of Cultural Heritage at Northwest University, said.
Yanling is located in Majiayao Village, Zhouling Township, Weicheng District, 5 kilometers north of Xianyang City, and is the tomb of Liu Xiao, Emperor Cheng of Hancheng.
"Take the Western Han Emperor's Mausoleum on the Wuling Plain as an example, it has scarcity and uniqueness, and is located in the suburbs of Xi'an and Xianyang, with convenient transportation, which is an excellent tourism resource in itself." However, with the exception of Yangling and Maoling, the remaining tombs have not been systematically developed in terms of heritage tourism. Liu Junmin said.
At present, in the planning of the cultural relics tourism and transportation route of the Han and Tang Emperors' Tombs compiled by Shaanxi Province, the relevant departments plan to use highways to connect the 29 imperial tombs of the Han and Tang Dynasties.
"If the tombs of the Han and Tang Emperors can be planned in a unified way, connected by roads, infrastructure, etc., to form a scenic tourism belt that stretches for hundreds of miles, it will be very majestic." Xu Weimin, a professor at the School of Cultural Heritage of Northwest University, said that after the Mausoleum of Qin Shi Huang and the Qianling Tomb of Emperor Gaozong of Tang became tourist scenic spots, they all led to the development of rural tourism, service industries and cultural industries in the surrounding areas.
The cultural value of the Han and Tang Emperors' Tombs is no less than that of the Ming Tombs, but at present, more imperial tombs and funerary tombs are sleeping in the fields, some imperial tombs are in a state of no way to go, and there is a lack of relevant cultural relics and monuments around the introduction, guide road signs, etc., so that visitors "can't find and can't see". Historical sites have not been awakened, and their huge cultural tourism value has not been fully valued.