As we all know, the Western Han Dynasty is another unified dynasty after the Qin Dynasty, which has gone through 12 emperors and enjoyed 210 years of statehood. Among them, the tombs of 11 emperors of the Western Han Dynasty are buried in Xianyang City and Xi'an City in Shaanxi Province, and the imperial tombs are huge and imposing, except for the tombs of Emperor Wen of Han, the rest have tall feudal soil and regular cemeteries. The Tombs of Emperor Wen of Han and Du Ling of Emperor Xuan of Han are buried on the Eastern Suburbs of Xi'an on the White Deer Ridge and the Shaoling Tomb in the southeast, respectively, and the remaining 9 are buried on the Xianyang Tomb on the north bank of the Wei River. Regarding the Tomb of Emperor Wen of Han, previous archaeological experts believed that Baling was located in the phoenix mouth of the northeast corner of Bailuyuan, until 2015, archaeological research believed that the "Great Tomb of Jiangcun" was Baling, and recently the State Administration of Cultural Heritage officially determined that the Tomb of Bailuyuan Jiangcun in Xi'an City, Shaanxi Province, was the Tomb of Emperor Wendi of Han, and the millennium mystery was finally solved!
Baling (Jiangcun Tomb), located at the western end of Bailuyuan in the eastern suburbs of Xi'an, is about 800 meters northeast of the mausoleum of Empress Dou, the wife of Emperor Wen, about 2 kilometers southwest of the Southern Tomb of Empress Bo, and about 2.1 kilometers north of the "Phoenix Mouth" of Baling, which was originally thought to have no Han Dynasty tombs. After archaeological exploration, the surface of the Jiangcun Tomb is "Ya" shaped, the edge of the tomb is about 72 meters long and 30 meters deep, and 110 outer hidden pits have been found around the burial chamber, and there are cobbled cemetery facilities around the outer pits, which are speculated to be independent imperial mausoleums. Archaeologists said that the ruins of the cemetery wall were found outside the Jiangcun Tomb and the Mausoleum of Empress Dou, and it is speculated that the two mausoleums share a cemetery, with a cemetery length of 1200 meters from east to west and 863 meters wide from north to south. Jiangcun Tomb excavated 8 outer pits, a total of more than 1500 cultural relics were excavated, including pottery, iron, carriage and horse ware, pottery figurines, copper seals and so on.
According to the tomb system of the Han Dynasty, the Western Han Dynasty generally buried the emperor and queen together, and each had a sealed tomb, while the Jiangcun Tomb did not see the Sealed Tomb, so experts had previously been called "Jiangcun Tomb". The historical records after the Yuan Dynasty generally record that the Han Wen Emperor's tomb is located under the mouth of the phoenix, which has also led experts to believe that the mouth of the phoenix is the tomb. However, according to the location of Empress Dou's mausoleum, it can be judged that emperor Wen's mausoleum should be nearby, and it is a little far from the phoenix mouth, and later it was found that Jiangcun Tomb and Empress Dou's mausoleum shared a cemetery, so it was speculated that Jiangcun Tomb was a baling tomb. According to the shape and scale of the Jiangcun Tomb, experts said that it meets the specifications of the highest level of tombs in the Western Han Dynasty, and its surrounding distribution of The Tomb of Empress Dou and Empress Bo is distributed, so it confirms their judgment even more. On the morning of December 14, 2021, the State Administration of Cultural Heritage held a meeting in Beijing and officially announced that the tomb of Bailuyuanjiang Village in Xi'an City, Shaanxi Province, was the tomb of Emperor Wen of Han.
This archaeological excavation confirmed the name of the 11 imperial tombs of the Western Han Dynasty, which are double cemeteries, the imperial tombs are located in the middle, and the structural layout surrounded by outer hidden pits. This is obviously different from the Han Gaozu Changling Tomb and the Han Hui Emperor An Mausoleum, laying the foundation for the imperial tomb system in the middle and late Western Han Dynasty. Emperor Wen of Han, Liu Heng, was the third emperor of the Western Han Dynasty, the fourth son of Liu Bang, the ancestor of Han Gaozu, and the half-brother of Liu Ying, emperor of Han Hui. After Liu Bang's death, his son Liu Ying succeeded to the throne as Emperor Hui of Han, and Lü Hou took power in the imperial court, but unfortunately Emperor Hui died young. It was not until after Lü Hou's death that the eunuch Zhou Bo joined forces with the chancellor Chen Pingren to crush the Forces of Zhu Lü and usher liu Hengjin, the acting king, to succeed him, and was known as Emperor Wen of Han. During the reign of Emperor Wen of Han, he exerted great efforts to govern, built water conservancy, practiced frugality and simplicity, realized the prosperity of the country, and the well-off of the people, and opened the prelude to the "rule of Wenjing". Emperor Wen of Han was known for his filial piety and personally tasted medicine for his mother, Empress Bo, and the protagonist of "Tasting The Soup Medicine" in "Twenty-Four Filial Pieties" was Emperor Wen of Han.