Qin Shi Huang Mausoleum is the world's largest, most peculiar structure, the most rich connotation of the mausoleum, Qin Shi Huang built this mausoleum before and after 36 years, invested more than 700,000 manpower, and even sometimes nearly 800,000 people, the investment of manpower equivalent to the world's largest existing pyramid - Khufu Pyramid 8 times. Excluding the burial pits of the Imperial Tomb, the underground palace cemetery of the Qin Shi Huang Mausoleum alone covers an area of nearly 260,000 square meters, which is 78 times that of the Forbidden City.
It is precisely because of the ingenious craftsmanship and the investment at any cost that the sealing soil of the Qin Shi Huang Mausoleum will be as high as 115 meters (after erosion and geological evolution, only 43 meters are left today), so that some people think that the Qin Shi Huang Mausoleum is a hill.
So, since the Mausoleum of Qin Shi Huang is not a mountain, why is the Mausoleum of Qin Shi Huang in everyone's impression actually the image of a mountain?
▲Mausoleum of The First Qin Emperor
The Mausoleum of Qin Shi Huang was built on the alluvial fan of the river in the north of Lishan Mountain, and the north is adjacent to Weishui, which is an excellent feng shui treasure land. Its mausoleum is divided into a surface part and a palace part, and its surface is the Qinling sealing soil, its shape is almost square, the top is flat, and the surrounding slope is trapezoidal, so this surface makes many people mistakenly think of a hill. In fact, the underground palace part is the core area of his tomb.
The underground palace is divided into two parts: the mausoleum park and the burial area, and under the surface sealing soil of the imperial tomb is the mausoleum park of the underground palace. From the inside to the outside, the underground palace cemetery is divided into four parts, namely miyagi, inner city, outer city, and outer city, which are separated by two inner and outer city walls, and the whole is in a zigzag shape. According to the different social functions of these four parts, the density of their funerary treasures is not the same, and the overall situation is gradually reduced from the inside to the outside.
In order to protect these cemeteries, the underground palace "three springs", if someone steals, people will follow the underground palace to be flooded, in addition to the mercury formed by the river and sea, the mechanism arrow crossbow and other killing weapons. As for the cong burial pit, it was used to place terracotta warriors similar to Qin Shi Huang and "members of social organizations" such as concubines, eunuchs and palace women who accompanied the funeral.
▲The mausoleum in the shape of a zigzag
Among the palaces where Qin Shi Huang was placed in the underground palace, according to Li Daoyuan's "Notes on the Water Classics", its roof was painted with the image of astronomical stars, with brilliant and dazzling night pearls to form the sun, moon and stars, which reflected each other, and under its coffin were built three mountains and five mountains similar to China's terrain, and the rivers and seas in between were infused with mercury and infused with machine phases. Around the bushes, countless statues of wen and wu officials stood humbly in front of the coffin of the First Emperor.
According to the "Chronicle of History", this magnificent imperial mausoleum was built for a total of 39 years, divided into roughly three stages.
The first stage is that the King of Qin sweeps the Liuhe and unifies the world. Because it was at this stage that a large amount of financial resources of the Qin State were used for war, its mausoleum was only designed with a general framework, and the construction progress was very slow. But even so, it took a full 26 years.
The second stage was the 9-year reign of Qin Shi Huang after unifying the world, due to the unification of the country and the mountains, the resources were efficiently integrated and allocated, so the construction progress in this period was rapidly improved.
The third stage was 4 years after the death of Qin Shi Huang, which coincided with the uprising of Chen Sheng and Wu Guang, and the country's political situation was unstable and the financial resources were insufficient, so it could only be hastily concluded.
▲Longitudinal section of the Qin Tombs
Unfortunately, in the first year of the Qin Prince's infant, the Mausoleum of the First Qin Emperor ushered in its disaster not long after its completion. At that time, after Xiang Yu entered the pass, he led his 300,000-strong army to destroy the Mausoleum of the First Emperor of Qin and loot the surface buildings of the Imperial Tomb. But he did not stop there, and also excavated the part of the underground palace, and the reason why the Terracotta Warriors and Horses Pit of the Qin Shi Huang Mausoleum will reappear now is precisely because Xiang Yu destroyed the burial area of the underground palace. As for the mausoleum area, it was fortunate that the underground palace was heavily organed, causing many casualties to the Chu army, and it was saved.
Later, during the Han Dynasty, in order to appease the nobles of the original Seven Kingdoms, Liu Bang sent people to guard the tombs of their ancestors, and the mausoleum of Qin Shi Huang was protected by twenty households of tomb keepers. However, because the mausoleum of Qin Shi Huang is too famous, there will inevitably be an army plundering here every time there is chaos, so these twenty tomb keepers do not play a great role. During the Xinmang regime, the Chimei army visited once, during the Wei and Jin dynasties, Later Zhao's Shi Hu also excavated the Qin Tombs, and during the Late Tang Dynasty, the Qin Shi Huang Mausoleum suffered another large-scale destruction.
Therefore, after thousands of years of beacon fire, the surface buildings of Qinling Mountains have long ceased to exist, and the burial area has also been destroyed, fortunately, the underground palace cemetery has not been destroyed because of the complexity of the organs, and all we can see on its surface is a sealed mound.