In ancient China, the ancients were subject to the level of cognition, believing that people would be reincarnated after death, so in order to be able to enjoy the wealth of the world, it naturally led to the wind of thick burial, and as a result of the chain, this also led to the rise of excavation of ancient tombs. Therefore, in order to prevent the excavation of ancient tombs, successive dynasties will severely deal with those who dig tombs. Almost all dynastic laws provided for capital punishment for anyone who opened a coffin to see a corpse.
But even so, whenever the war years are chaotic and the people's livelihood is withered, this trend of excavation will rise again. After all, only by letting oneself live will someone respect the dead, not only the people, but even the princes of the ruling side. The Three Kingdoms period was such an era.
At that time, the world was in chaos and the crowd was divided. Under the devastation of this war, the economy withered and could not make ends meet, and the princes of all sides also needed to worry about their wealth.
After Liu Bei occupied Yizhou, the treasury at that time had already won nothing, but if he wanted to attack and seize the world, it was naturally impossible to do without money. So he came up with a brilliant plan - to issue straightforward money.
"This easy ear. But when a hundred dollars are minted, and the prices are equalized, the officials are made official." This kind of inflated large amount of coins seriously exceeded the face value of han five baht, so that it could grab private wealth on a large scale, and also quickly made Liu Bei "enrich the treasury within a few months". As the other side of the Three Kingdoms, Cao Cao wanted to come simply and rudely, and he chose to seize the wealth of the dead - to dig ancient tombs.
In ancient China, which emphasized the importance of the dead as great, Cao Cao's move was really difficult to climb the hall of elegance. For a time, chen Lin, who was also the seventh son of Jian'an, was also criticized by the people of the time, and Chen Lin, who was also the seventh son of Jian'an, had "personally excavated, broken the coffin and the naked body, and plundered the golden treasure." Let the holy pilgrimage weep, and the soldiers and the people be sad! But in fact, as a truly excellent leader, although Cao Cao's move offended the "dead man" and put himself in a bad name, it was obviously wiser than Liu Bei's attempt to take the people's fat and people's anointing, causing the people of Yizhou to complain, and offending the living.
Moreover, Cao Cao was also very pragmatic, and at the same time set up a perfect tomb robbery institution while robbing the tomb, "Cao also specially placed the general of the qiu zhonglang, touched the lieutenant of the gold, and passed through the turmoil, and no skeleton was revealed." That is to say, "Lieutenant Touching Gold" and "General Fa Qiu Zhonglang" are all elegant official positions invented by Cao Cao for tomb robbers, and it is precisely because of this that Cao Cao was also respected as the grandfather of the tomb robbers.
As far as the actual effect of Cao Cao's tomb robbery is concerned, it can also be said that it is a great harvest, among which according to the "Notes on the Water Classics", there was a robbery excavation of an ancient tomb, and after the coffin was broken, "tens of thousands of jinbao" was found, relying solely on the property obtained from the tomb robbery, Cao Cao fed his army for 3 years.
So whose grave was excavated? In the "Biography of Cao Cao", it is recorded that "(Cao) Cao Beibei entered the tomb and sent Liang Xiaowang Tomb..." That is to say, Cao Cao stole and excavated the tomb of Liang Xiaowang.
King Xiao of Liang was Liu Wu, the younger brother of Liu Qi, the Emperor jing of Han. His mother was Empress Dowager Dou, who had made great achievements in the Rebellion of the Seven Kingdoms and held Suiyang to the death, and thus became the king of power relied upon by the Han Jing Emperor. Moreover, under his rule, most of them were rich and important places of the Han Dynasty, and he himself was very fond of looting money, and later intended to seize the throne when Emperor Jing of Han was ill, and was blocked by Emperor Wu of Han, and then died of illness.
The funerary goods in his burial chamber are naturally very rich. In order to prevent excavation, he himself also set up a solid tomb passage, and the mausoleum alone was built for more than 20 years. However, he was not afraid of thieves stealing, he was afraid of thieves, and Cao Cao had military power, even if the King of Liang "cut the mountain to be a guo, wear stones for hiding" could not withstand Cao Cao's theft.
As a follow-up, even after the founding of the People's Republic of China, when archaeologists carried out protective excavations, more than 20,000 cultural relics such as golden jade clothes were still unearthed in the tomb of King Xiao of Liang, which shows the wealth of King Liang.
References: "Cao Cao's Biography", "Water Commentary", etc