China's State Administration of Cultural Heritage officially announced today that the location of the Han Wen Emperor's mausoleum is determined to be the Bailuyuan Jiangcun Tomb in Xi'an City, Shaanxi Province, rather than under the "Phoenix Mouth" recorded in historical records. This archaeological work has determined the exact location of the tombs of Emperor Wen of the Han Dynasty and solved the problem of the names of the eleven imperial tombs of the Western Han Dynasty.
According to the Observer Network, the Jiangcun Tomb is located in Baqiao District, Xi'an City, Shaanxi Province. In 2016, the outer pit of the Jiangcun Tomb was disturbed, in order to confirm the preservation status of the tomb and the distribution of the surrounding cultural relics, with the approval of the State Administration of Cultural Heritage, archaeologists conducted systematic archaeological investigation and exploration of the Jiangcun Tomb and its nearby Empress Dou Mausoleum, The Southern Tomb of Empress Bo and the "Phoenix Mouth" site that is said to be the Tomb of Emperor Wen of Han, and carried out archaeological excavations of the hidden pit outside the mausoleum, and now basically confirmed that the Jiangcun Tomb is the tomb of Liu Heng, the emperor of the early Han Dynasty of the Western Han Dynasty.
Jiangcun Tomb is located at the western end of Bailuyuan in the eastern suburbs of Xi'an, about 800 meters northeast is the Mausoleum of Empress Dou, about 2000 meters southwest of the Southern Tomb of Empress Bo, and about 2100 meters north is the "Phoenix Mouth" location where the former state security unit Baling is located.
Archaeological exploration confirmed that there were no Han Dynasty tombs at the "Phoenix Mouth" site, which was excluded as the possibility of a baling tomb. Jiangcun tomb plan is "Ya" shape, the surface of the land is not sealed, the burial chamber side length of about 72 meters, more than 30 meters deep, more than 110 outer burial pits have been found around the burial chamber, the outer pit has pebble paved cemetery facilities (tentatively named "Stone Boundary"), the side length is about 390 meters, and there are gate sites on the front and outside of the four sides of the stone boundary, which is speculated to be an independent Imperial Tomb (Empress Dou's Mausoleum also has an independent Hou Mausoleum).
The remains of the cemetery wall found outside the Jiangcun Tomb and the Mausoleum of Empress Dou are speculated to be in the same mausoleum, which is about 1200 meters long from east to west and about 863 meters wide from north to south. Archaeology has excavated eight outer pits of jiangcun tombs, unearthed more than 1500 pieces of pottery figurines, copper seals, copper carriages and horses, iron tools, pottery, etc., and the copper seals have "Chefu", "Instrument House", "Riding Thousand People in The Middle", "Fuyin", "Cangyin", "ZhongsikongYin", etc., indicating that the outer Tibetan pits around the Jiangcun Tomb should be built to imitate the actual official office and the government treasury.
The shape and scale of the Jiangcun Tomb are in line with the highest level tomb specifications of the Western Han Dynasty, coupled with the distribution of the Tomb of Empress Dou and the Tomb of Empress Bo around it, experts confirm that the Tomb of Jiangcun is the Tomb of emperor Wen of Han.
This archaeological work has determined the exact location of the tombs of Emperor Wen of the Han Dynasty and solved the problem of the names of the eleven imperial tombs of the Western Han Dynasty. The structural layout of the Double Mausoleum, the Imperial Tomb Center, and the Outer Hidden Pit shows obvious differences with the Ancestral Tomb of Han Gao and the Mausoleum of Emperor Hui of Han, which lays the foundation of the imperial tomb system in the middle and late Western Han Dynasty, and is of great significance to the in-depth study of the imperial tomb system in ancient China.
Emperor Wen of Han (203 BC – 157 BC) 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, the Emperor hui of Han, whose mother was Bo Ji. In the eleventh year of Han Gaozu (196 BC), Liu Heng was made the king. After Lü Hou's death, the lieutenant Zhou Bo joined forces with the chancellor Chen Pingren to crush the Forces of Zhu Lü and welcome Liu Heng into Beijing to succeed him. After taking the throne, he exerted great efforts to govern, build water conservancy, strictly practice frugality and simplicity, abolish corporal punishment, realize the prosperity of the country, and the well-off of the people, and open the beginning of the "rule of wenjing". In the seventh year of the Later Yuan Dynasty (157 BC), Liu Heng died in Weiyang Palace, with the temple name Taizong and emperor Xiaowen, and was buried in Baling.