In principle, archaeologists will not take the initiative to excavate ancient tombs, unless the ancient tombs are at risk of being destroyed, in order to protect the precious cultural relics in the tombs, they will carry out protective excavations of the ancient tombs. As for the more precious imperial tombs, it is even more difficult to excavate. Because more than sixty years ago, archaeologists had suffered great losses in the excavation of Dingling Tombs, resulting in the destruction of countless precious cultural relics.
In October 1955, Guo Moruo, Shen Yanbing, Wu Han, Deng Tuo and Fan Wenlan jointly proposed to excavate the Ming Tombs. However, because there was no experience in excavating the imperial tomb at that time, the excavation target was later transferred from Changling to the Dingling Tomb of the Wanli Emperor. After some careful preparation, archaeologists excavated the underground Xuangong of Dingling between 1956 and 1957. This excavation of Dingling has caused a sensation in the archaeological community and found many precious historical relics. But in essence, this archaeological excavation is undoubtedly a very failure.
The Ming Tomb is the mausoleum of Zhu Yijun, the Wanli Emperor of the Ming Dynasty, covering an area of 182,000 square meters. The underground palace has a staggering depth of 27 meters, consisting of five halls on the left, right, front, middle and rear, with an area of 1195 square meters, and is a veritable underground palace. The Wanli Emperor and his two empresses were buried in this extravagant underground palace. After the cleaning of archaeologists, a large number of precious cultural relics have been excavated in the underground palace, some of which are national treasures.
In dingling, archaeologists found imperial costumes, treasures, wooden figurines, armor, knives, arrows, gold, silver, jade, porcelain dishes, and a large number of silk fabrics. These are innumerable in numbers of precious artifacts, many of which have been destroyed due to poor preservation. Among the remaining cultural relics, the golden crown worn by the Wanli Emperor and the phoenix crown of the two empresses are the most precious.
The golden crown worn by the Wanli Emperor is called the "Golden Silk Wing ShanGuan", which is completely woven from gold wire, and is woven with 518 0.2 mm thin gold wires into a "lantern empty" pattern. This kind of weaving technique can almost be called pure fire, it is simply breathtaking. Even today, it is very difficult to weave such a golden crown by hand. This golden crown is also the only emperor's golden crown found so far, which can be called a national treasure among national treasures.
A total of 4 pieces of the Queen's Phoenix Crown were found, namely "Three Dragons and Two Phoenix Crowns", "Six Dragons and Three Phoenix Crowns", "Nine Dragons and Nine Phoenix Crowns", and "Twelve Dragons and Nine Phoenix Crowns". Among them, the six dragons and three phoenixes on the crown are all woven from gold wire, lifelike, and three phoenixes pasted with kingfisher feathers are placed under the roof, as if they are about to break through the air. The dragon and phoenix on the crown of the phoenix are all mouthed, and there are as many as 128 red and sapphires, in addition to more than 5400 pearls of various kinds, which can be called extremely valuable.
In addition to the golden crown and the phoenix crown, there is also a "Silk Twelve Chapters Gong Costume" of the Wanli Emperor in Dingling. The dragon robe is the dress worn by ancient emperors when they attend important ceremonies, and its preciousness is absolutely beyond everyone's imagination. The shading of the "Twelve Chapters of Silk Dress" is covered with various auspicious patterns, and 12 dragons are made of silk on the front and back of the body and sleeves, and each dragon has 8 auspicious patterns around it.
The production process of reeling is very complicated, and a skilled worker can only weave up to 1 inch of cloth a day. It takes at least a decade to weave enough fabric to sew a garment. Because this process is too complicated, the technology of reeling silk has now been lost. From the production process of the silk, it can be seen how precious this "silk twelve chapters of the costume" is.
Because the cultural relics preservation technology at that time was not yet mature, many precious cultural relics in the Dingling Tombs were not preserved. To this day, many archaeologists are angry about this. At that time, the 5 people who jointly proposed the excavation of the Ming Dynasty Imperial Tomb did not expect that the situation would become like this. So, what happened to Dingling afterwards?
Because people's awareness of cultural relics protection at that time was not high, dingling was later greatly damaged. On August 24, 1966, the bodies, bones, portraits, and other important archaeological materials of the Wanli Emperor and the two empresses were carried by a crowd of people to the front of the Dingling Museum and burned. A large number of silk fabrics excavated from Dingling were rapidly weathered because they were not effectively protected. Therefore, many later archaeologists called the Dingling excavation "a major tragedy in the history of archaeology".