From ancient times to the present, all kinds of tomb robbers in China are everywhere, but some ancient tombs sometimes play a protective role in cultural relics because of their special architectural layout.
As early as the late autumn of 2005, archaeologists in Changsha city were cleaning up an early stolen tomb when a large number of precious cultural relics were found in the cemetery.
In April 2005, bulldozers at a university town construction site on the west bank of the Xiang River in Changsha accidentally found the vaulted roof of a brick chamber tomb while bulldozing a small mound called Ant Mountain.
Several staff members of the Changsha Institute of Cultural Relics and Archaeology rushed to the scene on the news, and according to various indications, they judged that this should be a high-ranking aristocratic tomb of the Ming Dynasty, and it was likely to be a king-level tomb.
As bulldozers destroyed part of the roof during operation, rescue excavations of the tomb began immediately. As the remaining sealed soil of the tomb roof was cleared layer by layer, the tomb building was fully displayed in front of the people.
The tomb chamber of ant hill Ming tomb consists of the main chamber and the ear chambers that extend from the sides to resemble amphora. The tomb is 8.5 meters deep from north to south, 8.7 meters wide from east to west, and has a construction area of more than 35 square meters.
Since the width of the ear chamber is only 1.5 meters, it is a brick flat roof, while the main chamber spans 3.2 meters, and the top is built into a high arch, that is, the part that is exposed at the beginning.
Generally speaking, high-level tombs in the Ming Dynasty will have two burial chambers before and after, and a small number of them will have left and right ear chambers and niches. The interior of the burial chamber is unknown today, but it was built in great detail just from the fact that the coupon roof was destroyed by bulldozers.
The practice of this tomb was very exquisite at the time, the thickness of the top of the coupon was more than a dozen layers, and on the fifth and sixth floors archaeologists found that it was not the green brick used, but a rosin layer.
The so-called rosin layer is a mixture of rosin, stone and lime to make a brick-like form, but it is all sealed.
Rosin is a natural resin, as a kind of Chinese herbal medicine, the ancients believed that it has the effect of dispelling wind and dampness, draining pus and pulling out poison, muscle and pain relief. In the periphery of such a huge tomb, wrapped in a whole layer of rosin, the purpose is naturally not to relieve the pain of the deceased, but to use its viscous texture insoluble in water, cooled and very hard characteristics, mixed with lime, stone can produce a cement-like effect.
Archaeologists speculate that this may be a special treatment layer made for sealing or anti-theft. Although rosin is not very precious, it is still not easy to use such a huge amount of rosin in a southern region like Changsha. From this point of view, the degree of exquisite construction of the tomb has exceeded that of most Ming Dynasty kings.
During this period, the life experiences of King Tan, King Gu, King Xiang, and King Ji who were sealed in Changsha were all taken out and studied repeatedly. According to experience, the tombs of the Ming Dynasty nobles of this level should be recorded in detail in the local chronicles, and it is impossible that any of the clan kings would be secretly buried here.
Archaeologists ruled out King Ji. King Tan set himself on fire because of his fear of sin and did not have a tomb. After the King of Xiang was resealed and buried in Xiangyang, Hubei Province, the owner of the Ming Tomb of Ant Mountain was left with only the King of Gu, who was convicted and demoted to a commoner.
After the abolition of King Gu, there is no longer any record of him in the literature, and the exact person who the tomb belongs to remains to be proved by subsequent archaeological excavations.
However, before the Yongdao and the tomb door have been found, the archaeologists accidentally found a robbery hole on the side of the exposed tomb roof, which is undoubtedly the situation that makes the archaeologists most entangled. It is naturally regrettable that the archaeological team found that the tomb has long been stolen, but at the same time, the excavation of the tomb fill has an unexpected harvest.
Unlike most Ming Dynasty tombs, the form of the Ming Tomb Of Ant Mountain is somewhat special. Its burial passage is a vertical burial passage. On the south side of the tomb, which is where the tomb door is located, there is a wall of sealed doors, also known as the King Kong Wall.
In the case of a large tomb with a sloping burial passage, the starting point of the tomb passage should be somewhere on the surface far away from the Vajra Wall. But the tomb in front of the Wall of the Ming Tomb in Ant Mountain is not so much a passage as a rectangular pit five meters long and three meters wide.
Clearing the grave was supposed to be the easiest part of the excavation process. Generally speaking, the burial debris is relatively pure, and there are few inclusions, at most, it is mixed with some small tomb building tools.
Since the area of the Tomb of Ant Hill Is only fifteen square meters, under the efforts of the archaeologists, the first discovery was made in half a day.
When it was only about a meter above the surface, archaeologists found a stone in the middle of the cemetery. Cleared to a certain depth, people finally realized that it was a group of small stone buildings, resembling the grain hoards used to store grain in ancient times.
Digging further down, when the stone building was intact, people began to feel that it was more like a stupa with a somewhat special shape.
In June 2005, the clean-up of the stone tower officially began on a hot afternoon. The archaeologists quickly removed several of the uppermost stones and found that the tower was hollow.
The stone tower is indeed hollow. With this discovery the excavation site was full of jubilation. The next thing people saw in the belly of the tower was another small tower.
There are towers in towers, and similar scenes are often seen at excavation sites at Buddhist sites. Unlike the outer stone tower, the small tower inside is crystal clear in texture and is a precious artifact in itself. The jade pagoda is very delicate, only 1.5 meters high, and its shape is very similar to the white pagoda in Beijing's Beihai Park. It is completely in line with the style of Tibetan Buddhist bowl-covered stupas.
At first, people thought that this exquisite pagoda should be carved from a single piece of material. However, when preparing to move, some team members suddenly found that the phase wheel and the bowl of the bowl tower did not seem to be a whole.
The circular belly of the small tower turned out to be hollow, and the water that seeped in from the gap in the tower filled this small space. Therefore, people cannot know whether soaking in stagnant water is beneficial or cons to the protection of the paint in the small tower, but at this time, no one dares to dump these stagnant water at will.
For cultural relics of different materials, long-term immersion in water will have completely different consequences, in order to develop a corresponding protection plan, archaeologists need to predict the nature of the cultural relics in advance. With the help of medical instruments, the scans showed that the artifacts inside the lacquer culvert should be paper.
Soon the lacquer that had been closed for more than five hundred years was opened again. It was found that some Buddhist and Taoist scriptures were indeed found, and they were carefully wrapped.
Every page in the scriptures is written with this gold powder, and it is written in an unconventional manner. Looking through these verses carefully, people also found traces of cinnabar approval between the lines. It can be seen from this that the original owner of these scriptures should be the emperor himself. Being able to obtain the Imperial Gift Scriptures seems to prove once again the noble status of the tomb owner.
The appearance of stone towers in the cemetery is the first time in the entire history of archaeology. However, the day after the stone tower was cleared, there was an unprecedented phenomenon of ruins in the cemetery again.
Near the bottom of the tomb, a strangely shaped building is revealed, a cross-shaped green brick building that resembles a cross used in Western religions. Since the pagoda letter can unearth both Buddhist and Taoist scriptures, it should be logical that the emergence of Western elements should also be natural.
But the next excavations were not the same thing at all, and two bronze artifacts were found in the cross-shaped grooves, which seem to be the magic tools used in The Taoist ceremony, but there is no strong evidence to define it as a Taoist relic.
With bizarre discoveries such as the stone tower collection and the cross, when the tomb clearance team found a circular shaft, people were already surprised.
This strange well and the water inside it helped the archaeologists a lot in the final stages of the archaeological excavations. The well water from this well in the tomb helped the archaeologists clean up and clean the excavated items.
In the end, the archaeologists entered the burial chamber through the passage deep in the cemetery, but the inside of the tomb was a completely regrettable scene.
The theft caused serious damage to the tomb of Ant Shan Ming. Despite the meticulous cleaning, only a few dozen artifacts have been unearthed from a tomb of this scale. It should be known that the tombs of the ming dynasty kings who have not been stolen, such as the tomb of the liangzhuang king in Zhongxiang, Hubei Province, have unearthed a total of more than 5300 pieces.
The most surprising thing is that through the examination of the epitaph inscription in the tomb, the archaeologists found that the owner of the tomb was not the Gu King that everyone speculated, but the nursing mother Zhang Miaoshou, who was buried by the Gu King before he was deposed.
According to the inscription, this woman who had been following King Gu to Changsha from a distant border pass should occupy a very important position in King Gu's heart, and it was for this reason that she was able to enjoy a mausoleum no less than the rank of King of the Clan after her death.
But for a nursing mother of low social status, such a burial system is obviously arrogant, so that there is no description left in any local chronicle or in the notes of the literati.