In the past two days, the news about the identification of the tomb of Emperor Wendi of Han on the Internet has been boiling over, because this archaeological work has ended a thousand-year-old unsolved case, that is, where is Emperor Wen of Han buried?
1. Why did Baling not seal the land?
On July 6, 157 BC, Liu Heng, the third emperor of the Han Dynasty, died in Weiyang Palace, and 7 days later, he was buried in Baling. The site of the Baling Tomb was stepped on by Emperor Wen of Han before his death, "seventy miles east of Chang'an City". Baling did not seal the land, which is related to the character of Emperor Wen of Han.
This is a long story, let's start with Emperor Wen of Han just joining the work. In 187 BC, Lü Hou, who held the political power of the Western Han Dynasty, died, and the chancellor Chen Ping, Taiwei Zhou Bo, and others eradicated Lü Hou's family power and welcomed Liu Heng, who was far away in the daiguo (present-day Shanxi), into Chang'an and proclaimed himself emperor. Because his father Liu Bang did not favor Liu Heng, Liu Heng was cautious and cautious, and never dared to die, until he became emperor at the age of 23, he still looked like a good young man.
During his reign, The Han Dynasty advocated frugality, lightly dispensed with small gifts, rested with the people, and created the famous "Rule of Wenjing", and the Han Dynasty began to flourish. The reason why the later Emperor Wudi of the Han Dynasty was able to expedition against the Xiongnu, Nanping and Nanyue, and show off the great Han style, relied on the wealth accumulated under the rule of Wen Jingzhi, after all, the entrepreneurial direction of this rich second generation was too expensive.
Emperor Wendi's three good young men were really not pretend, and during his 23-year reign, he did not build mansions, did not buy luxury goods for his wives, and lived a very frugal life. Therefore, Baling cultivated into this look, which is also his meaning.
Regarding the construction of Baling, there is a record in the history books that once Emperor Wen of Han inspected the construction site of Baling (most of the ancient emperors began to build mausoleums for themselves when they were alive), and sighed: "With mountains as mausoleums, using stones as rafters, such a strong tomb, who can open it!" The retinue echoed one after another, at this time, Zhonglang possessed Zhang Shizhi's lever essence and retorted, "Your Majesty's words are not right." If there is a coveted treasure in it, you can be opened no matter how strong you are buried, and if there is no treasure, it does not matter whether there is a stone rafter or not. When Emperor Wen of Han heard this, he felt that this was very much in line with his concept of thin burial, and he further strengthened the idea of chiseling mountains as mausoleums.
Because there is no huge artificial sealing soil, it is difficult for tomb robbers to find the entrance to the underground palace, so in the last year of the Western Han Dynasty, after the Chimei army invaded Chang'an, "the temples and gardens were excavated", but Baling was lucky to escape the disaster.
2, millennium oolong
Baling did not seal the land, and there are few historical records, so the specific location of its tomb was no longer known at the end of the Western Han Dynasty.
From the eastern Han Dynasty, people gradually believed that Baling was a mausoleum based on a mountain, and bailu in the south of Maoyaoyuan Village, Xiwang Street, Baqiao District, Xi'an City, originally had a small hill called "Phoenix Mouth", and the northern slope was triangular, much like a sealed mound, so it was identified as a baling. In the Yuan Dynasty, this view became more popular, and Luo Tianjian swore in the "Class Editor Chang'an Zhi" that Baling was "forty miles east of jingzhao tonghua gate, under the mouth of the northern phoenix of Bailuyuan". During the Qianlong period of the Qing Dynasty, when Bi Yuan, a well-known cultural blogger, was an inspector in Shaanxi, he examined many imperial tombs, and on the issue of the specific location of the Baling Tombs, he also adopted the views of his predecessors, believing that the phoenix mouth was the Baling. At the foot of the Phoenix Mouth today, there are still more than 10 stone steles, of which the tallest and largest stele was erected by Bi Yuan for the Baling Tomb.
Embarrassingly, in recent years, archaeologists have conducted detailed exploration of the Phoenix Mouth area and found no artificially excavated voids or otherwise formed remains, that is, it is just a pile of soil, nothing.
Stone stele in front of the mouth of the phoenix
3, a secret of two thousand years
In 2001, tomb robbers excavated a batch of pottery figurines from the Western Han Dynasty in the Bailuyuan Mausoleum Area and sold them upside down. In March 2002, Shaanxi police learned that six black clay figurines unearthed here were being auctioned at the Sothby Auction House in the United States. After more than a year of negotiations by the Chinese government, the United States returned the six black clay figurines to China in 2003.
The pottery figurines unearthed from the Gangchon Tomb, which are black throughout, may be related to the theft of the tomb in the early years and the ignition of charcoal in the tomb. That is, they were not originally of this color, they were blackened
Through the interrogation of tomb robbers, it was learned that the pottery figurines came from a large tomb on the east side of Jiangcun in Baqiao District, located on the west side of Empress Dou's mausoleum, and the tomb robbers stole a total of 300 cultural relics at that time. At first, archaeologists speculated that this was the tomb of Emperor Wen of Han and Empress Dou's daughter Princess Guantao, Princess Liu Yan.
However, some scholars do not agree with this statement, because the rank of princess tombs in the Han Dynasty is analogous to that of princes, and the tombs of princes are much smaller. Especially when Princess Guantao died when Emperor Wu of Han, in the face of this unpredictable boss, she did not dare to repair the mausoleum beyond the specifications, and it was so big that she was not waiting for death, she was looking for death.
The Jiangcun Tomb is large in scale and has a large number of outer hidden pits, and the situation of the Outer Hidden Pit is very similar to the Yang Mausoleum of the Han Jing Emperor, far exceeding the level of the tombs of the princes, and the tomb owner is likely to be Emperor Wen of Han.
Since 2017, archaeologists have carried out rescue excavations of the Jiangcun Tomb, and it has been found that the tomb is about 40 meters long and wide, 30 meters deep, the plane is "Sub" shaped, the surface is not sealed, and more than 110 outer pits have been found around the burial chamber. The reason why it is now possible to determine that the Gangchon Tomb is baling is because archaeologists have found the boundary of the cemetery, which surrounds the Tomb of Empress Dou and the Tomb of Gangchon. At this point, the secret of Baling was finally completely revealed.
Cultural relics excavated from the pit outside the Gangchon Tomb
Stolen cultural relics from the Gangchon Tomb
4. Why emperor Wen of Han was not buried in Xianyangyuan
Of the 11 imperial tombs of the Western Han Dynasty, except for the Tomb of Emperor Wen of Han on the White Deer Plain in the eastern suburbs of Xi'an, and the Tomb of Emperor Du of the Han Xuan Emperor on the Shaoling Plain in the southern suburbs of Xi'an, the remaining 9 tombs are on the Xianyang Plain in the north of Xi'an City. So, why didn't Emperor Wen of Han uphold the concept that "the most important thing for a family is to be neat", and build his mausoleum on the White Deer Plain?
Many scholars believe that this was Emperor Wen of Han's attempt to solve the problem of funeral rites for his mother, Empress Bo. After Bo became Liu Bang's concubine, he was not favored, and even Liu Heng was not favored. In this case, Liu Heng and his mother depended on each other for their lives, until they finally became emperor, they still had a deep affection for their mother, and the story of "tasting the soup medicine" in the "Twenty-Four Filial Pieties" was about Liu Heng and his mother Empress Bo. After Lü Hou's death, he was buried next to Liu Bang's Changling as Liu Bang's empress, and after Empress Bo's death, if she was also buried in Changling, it was a concubine, and the tomb specifications would be very low. Therefore, Emperor Wen of Han simply chose another place, fixed his mother and his mausoleum there, and directly buried his mother with the specifications of the empress dowager, and no one could take care of it.
Baling (Gangchon Tomb) mausoleum area
5. The "funerary products" that are difficult to say
Although the cultural relics of Baling were stolen and excavated, contemporary people inadvertently buried a huge amount of "funerary goods" for Emperor Wendi of Han, because not far from the Jiangcun Tomb is the largest single storage capacity in China , the Bailuyuan Jiangcungou Landfill, which was just closed two years ago because of the saturation of the storage capacity. There is a saying that garbage is a misplaced resource. Archaeologically speaking, this makes some sense, after all, our archaeologists are often excavating ancient garbage heaps. Perhaps two thousand years later, the Jiangcungou landfill will reappear in the sky and become an important material for future generations to study the lives of Xi'an citizens in the early 21st century. At this time, in the BalingLingLing Area, a small pit buried the life of the Nine-Five-Year Emperor, a large pit buried the lives of thousands of people, spanning two thousand years of history is thus intertwined, thick like the smell of Jiangcungou landfill.
Emperor Wendi of Han: I never dreamed that you would use the feng shui treasures I have chosen to bury garbage
Resources:
"Bashang Wugaoqiu Deer Original Relics - New Archaeological Discoveries of Emperor Hanwen's Baling Tomb"
History of Filial Piety
"Archaeological Blockbuster: Jiangcun Tomb Was Identified as the Tomb of emperor Wen of Han‖ exclusive interpretation of the true and false tomb of the millennium unsolved case"
Study on the Site Selection of the Tombs of emperor Wen of Han