A female corpse was found in the tomb, identified as an elderly single, with 200 red pills on the side
Ancient tombs are often important discoveries in archaeological work, through which we can get a glimpse of the history of thousands of years ago. In the 1960s, an ancient tomb was unearthed in Nanjing. The female corpse in the tomb is from the Eastern Jin Dynasty. But from the scene, she is likely to be an ancient "elderly single woman" with 200 red pills around her.
The owner of the tomb was a noble woman of the Eastern Jin Dynasty named Wang Danhu. The words on the tombstone tell of her identity before her death: "The eldest daughter of Wang Bin of the Jin Dynasty, the General of the Jin Dynasty, the General of the Guards of the Imperial Guard, was the eldest daughter of Wang Bin, the Prince of Linyi. He died on July 28, 28 of the third year of Shengping. He was buried in Shiraishi on September 30 of the year, in the tombstone of Bin. ”
The previous identity is too long. Wang Danhu's father, Wang Bin, was born in the most prominent clan at that time, the "Langya Royal Family". He was a cousin of Wang Dun, a powerful minister of the Eastern Jin Dynasty, and Wang Dao, the prime minister of the Eastern Jin Dynasty. Therefore, Wang Danhu was a decent "noble lady" at that time. But in this tomb, Wang Danhu was not buried with her husband.
She was buried with her parents, so experts speculate that Wang Danhu may have been unmarried before his death. According to the rules of the "married husband", if she marries out, it is her husband's family. There was no reason to be buried with her mother's family after her death. But this is not the problem we are going to talk about today, because the red dan in Wang Danhu's coffin is more interesting.
There are about 200 of these pills, what are their ingredients? After the laboratory test of the Academy of Pharmacy, it was found that these red pills were ancient "elixirs", that is, the "immortal medicines" pursued by people in that era, which were mainly composed of some unknown substances such as sulfur and mercury.
Wang Danhu died three years after Shengping, the second year of Sima Zhang, the Emperor of Jinmu, in 379 AD, when the Jin Dynasty scholar class was very popular to take medicine and alchemy. Presumably, everyone has heard of the Five Stone Mountain, which was sought after during the Wei and Jin dynasties.
Wang Danhu is a top family and is naturally influenced by this fashion. Like other scholars and nobles, Wang Danhu advocated "eating", that is, "eating stones", which was equivalent to eating these refined "immortal pills" every day. In fact, there are many people in the Langya Wang clan, including the famous calligrapher Wang Xizhi.
The Book of Jin records some stories about Wang Xizhi. At that time, alchemists hoped to transfer the anti-corrosive effects of metals to the human body through alchemy, thus making people "immortal". Obviously, this is just a fantasy. Wang Danhu, who took the medicine, not only did not live forever, but was finally poisoned. In ancient times, people wanted to live forever, but there was never such a thing in this world. In the end, these people were killed by their own desires.
During the Qin and Han dynasties, both Qin Shi Huang and Emperor Wu of Han pursued this "immortality". But alchemy did not achieve the desired effect. It was the yin and yang errors that led to the production of gunpowder and its spread to the West, which took a big step forward for the chemical industry and made people think about how to evaluate alchemy.