As the saying goes, "The talented son of Jiangnan will be buried in the north, and the loess of Shaanxi will be buried in the emperor." ”
Shaanxi is the birthplace of the Chinese nation, and China has been breeding endlessly on this land for 5,000 years, creating a splendid Chinese civilization. The Loess Plateau not only buries the emperors and generals of the Han and Tang dynasties, but also buries the princes of Zhou Qin and the ancient emperors. Shaanxi is the resting place of the Qin Dynasty, where thirty generations of Qin kings are buried. Finding the tombs of the Qin royal family has always been the dream of archaeologists.
At the beginning of 1933, Chinese and foreign archaeologists began to launch a search for the tombs of the Qin royal family. In the era of war and banditry, the bandits came, the warlords came, the Japanese army came, and the foreign scientific expedition team came, but after more than 40 years, the tombs of the Qin royal family were still buried deep underground and disappeared.
Small village
In April 1976, the Yongcheng Archaeological Team of Shaanxi Province explored a group of ancient tombs in Baqitun Village, Fengxiang County, to find the tomb of the Qin King. Han Wei, the leader of the archaeological team, looked at the holes he had made and prayed for good luck in his heart. For more than a month, the archaeological team has been fighting day and night here, but it has never found a tomb of the Qin King. Ancient examinations were worried and troubled from top to bottom, but for more than 40 years, countless archaeologists could not find the tomb of the Qin King, compared with the previous experts, the effort and effort of this month is minimal.
One morning in early April, the archaeological team finished exploring the cave and found nothing. When the archaeological team was preparing to return to the team headquarters, a villager in his 20s squeezed out of the crowd watching the liveliness, and the villager walked up to Han Wei and asked, "How do you know that there is a treasure here?" Han Wei casually told this young man about a set of professional knowledge, but his eyes kept staring at the team members who were still punching holes, hoping to have a little miracle at the end.
Excavation of ancient tombs
"You can't dig anything up here!"
The villagers said to Han Wei. Han Wei felt strange, so he asked the villagers why they said this. The villagers then told Han Wei that there was a place in their village that was a bit similar to the land dug by the archaeological team, and when he dug there a few days ago, he felt that the soil was very hard, and he also dug out a lot of rotten tiles and black charcoal. There may be treasure in that place, and if you dig it down, you may find it.
When Han Wei heard this, he immediately realized that the situation found by this villager was very unusual, so he quickly grabbed the young villager's hand and said, "Immediately take me to your village to see!" This young villager was Jin Beixin, a militiaman of Nanzhi Village, who rushed to Nanzhi Village with Han Wei and his party, and the archaeological team carried equipment and machinery overnight to camp in Nanzhi Village.
Excavation site
Early the next morning, the archaeological team under the leadership of Jin Beixin found the place where black charcoal was found, and Kaogu lifted a hoe and archaeological tools to excavate, 1 meter, 2 meters, 3 meters, all the way to 20 meters did not find any special circumstances. The hole was 20 meters deep and there was no situation, Captain Han couldn't help but feel anxious in his heart, this was the first time he had hit such a deep hole, if he couldn't find the tomb of the Qin King, this trip's efforts were all in vain.
At noon, when the probe reached about 21 meters, a new situation appeared, and some white and brown dirt was beaten out. After analyzing the soil, the experts were pleasantly surprised to announce that there was a huge tomb under this mound, and the scale of the tomb was very grand and spectacular. Han Wei breathed a sigh of relief, the tomb that had not been found for more than 40 years had finally been discovered, although it was not yet known whether it was the tomb of the King of Qin, but at least an ancient tomb had been found.
Unearthed ancient jade
After more than a week of exploration, the archaeological team found that the tomb was about 300 meters long, 55 meters wide, 24 meters deep, and had three steps on the four walls, inverted pyramid shape. Such a huge ancient tomb, if you want to excavate, you need to move more than 100,000 cubic meters of earth. This is a very huge project, and to excavate such a large tomb, it is necessary to mobilize a large number of manpower to excavate.
In order to ensure the smooth progress of the excavation work, nan commanded the villagers to temporarily form a battalion. Zhao Shengxiang, instructor of the militia battalion, and Zhao Manwu, the commander of the battalion, personally led more than 160 militia members to form a commando team to go deep into the excavation of the tomb. The giant tomb is 8 stories high, with 300 meters of sealed mounds and rammed walls, with a total construction area of 5,334 square meters. In the case of relatively backward technology at that time, to excavate this large tomb, it was necessary to spend many years. After the discovery of the giant tomb, experts from Beijing and Xi'an poured into Fengxiang County, and a large-scale excavation work began. The scale of this ancient tomb was huge, and at that time, it was insufficiently funded and the tools were not advanced enough, and it took a full 10 years to clean up the entire tomb and tomb passage.
Excavated bronzes
In April 1986, the fill in the tunnels and tombs was cleared, and 200,000 people were used to clean up the fill. When experts cleaned up the third layer of the platform, they found more than 240 holes on the platform, and these openings were circular or oval. Expert Han Wei and others suddenly felt like they had been poured a basin of cold water, so many robbery caves, the ancient tomb has long been stolen by tomb thieves, and a large number of cultural relics in the tomb are afraid that they have been destroyed. Experts have searched for more than 40 years without finding any clues, how did the tomb robbers find and enter the ancient tomb? More than 240 robbery caves indicate that tomb robbers have entered the tomb many times.
The tomb has been excavated for 10 years, and even if it is an empty tomb, it must continue to be excavated. Near the second platform, experts excavated a large number of scattered skeletons, which were dead and miserable, most of which were scattered. The closer you get to the third layer where the coffin is located, the more skeletons there are. In the middle of the third floor, there is a huge rafter room with a set of cypress rafters. These rafters are rectangular wooden houses made of cypress wood bastions, and there are doors between them.
Yellow intestines are asked
These regular fir trees are made of cypress cores, and the cross-section of each root is a square with a side length of 21 cm, and a 21 cm long mortise in the center of the two ends, weighing more than 300 kg, and the length is divided into 5.6 meters and 7.3 meters. In order to prevent groundwater from seeping in along the wood nodules and causing decay, the original nodules of the rafters were dug up and then cast and sealed with lead, tin and galvanized iron alloys.
In the process of metal pouring, the wood was not burned, and the pouring was very flat, indicating that the technology of grasping the alloy ratio and pouring temperature at that time was very mature. The perimeter is filled with charcoal around and above the chamber, and the perimeter is filled with green plaster mud, and these protective layers prevent moisture and oxygen from entering to protect the rafter chamber. This exquisite coffin protection measure is the famous "yellow intestine inscription".
In the subsequent archaeological excavations, experts removed more than 3,500 pieces of gold, stone, jade, pottery, copper and iron and other cultural relics from the ancient tombs, most of which are exquisite and rare treasures. In the tomb, experts found that the largest stone chime excavated so far is the most precious text on the stone chime, as many as 180, the font is 籀 script, similar to the "stone drum text", according to the text on it inferred that the owner of the tomb is Qin Jinggong, that is, the ancestor of the 15th generation before Qin Shi Huang.
Qin Jinggong Tomb is the first tomb of the Qin King to be excavated, and experts named it "Qin Gong No. 1 Tomb". The Great Tomb of Qin Gong No. 1 has a great influence and opened up the five most in the history of Chinese archaeology: one is the largest tomb excavated in China so far, the second is the 186 human bones cleared out of the tomb are the ancient tombs with the most martyrdom found in China; the third is that the yellow intestine inscription in the tomb is the most advanced rafter of the Zhou and Qin dynasties excavated so far; the fourth is the "wooden stele" on the outside of the two berbers of the rafter chamber is the earliest physical example of tombstones in the history of Chinese tombs; fifth, the stone chime excavated from the tomb is the earliest stone chime with inscriptions found in China.
Some of the artifacts unearthed
The Tomb of Qin Gong No. 1 is a major miracle in the history of archaeology, and after the excavation of Tomb No. 1 of Qin Gong, 21 Tombs of the King of Qin and 21 large carriage and horse pits have been excavated around the tomb. These more than 20 Qin King Mausoleum areas have formed a Large Ling District with a width of about 3 kilometers from north to south and about 7 kilometers from east to west, covering an area of 21 square kilometers. This area is 180 times the size of the Yin Dynasty Mausoleum in Anyang, Henan, and 2.5 times the area of the entire Xi'an City Wall, which is truly shocking in scale, and can be called an underground palace of the Qin Dynasty.
Tomb No. 1 of the Duke of Qin
Finally, in recognition of the villagers' merits in discovering the Qin Gong Tomb, the local government praised and rewarded the meritorious villagers. As a result, this glorious ancient tomb reappeared in the world and once again appeared in front of the eyes of the world.
bibliography:
1. "The Beginning and End of the Excavation of the First Tomb of Qin Gong"
2. "The Problem of the Burial Pit of The First Tomb of Qin Gong"