In ancient times, rich people were accustomed to enjoyment before they died, so before dying, they would arrange for themselves to be buried with many valuable items. Even if these people did not personally prepare before they died, their descendants would arrange funeral items for them when they were buried.
After some people started, more and more people followed suit, and later, it directly became a system of burial for nobles. In the most serious cases, the living are directly locked in the grave, and the living are buried with the deceased, and there is a slightly better way to replace the living with handicrafts.
In the Qing Dynasty, although it was no longer necessary to use living people to accompany the dead, many funeral items would also be arranged.
They buried with such a gorgeous thing, are they not afraid of being stolen? Today, let's talk about the stories of the tomb keepers
。
Image: Stills of valuable funerary goods
Although our country is a relatively humble country, there are some people without conscience in any dynasty. They can say that they specialize in the business of the dead, and as long as they find that there are good funerary goods, they will rush to wherever they go, and such people are also tomb robbers.
Tomb robbers generally have a lot of special tools, such as the Luoyang shovel, which is particularly fast for shoveling mud, and the Bagua disk and so on. They generally do not act alone, but several people form a group.
When robbing the tomb, there was even a special recipe, but Xiaobian was not engaged in this industry, so he did not know the content of the recipe.
Since ancient times, it has paid attention to the coordination of yin and yang, and since there are tomb robbers, there are naturally tomb keepers. Once in a novel there was a person named Zhang Qiling, and this person's identity was actually a tomb keeper. Not only him, but even his family has been guarding the tomb for generations.
Although this is only a novel, it is also written according to reality.
Historical tomb keepers have generally been guarded for generations.
Image: Tomb keeper Zhang Qiling stills
The more valuable the tomb, the more it is in a place where there are no people, but these tomb keepers have never betrayed their oaths, no matter what the environment is, no matter what the treatment, they use the strength of the whole family to guard, one keep is hundreds of thousands of years.
During the Southern Song Dynasty, there was a minister named Yu Yunwen who was a master of military use, and he often led troops to confront jin soldiers, and most of the time he won more with less. Yu Yunwen was buried in Sichuan Province after his death. When he was first buried, the emperor did not order someone to guard the tomb for him, but in the fourth year after his death, the emperor ordered the Song family to guard the tomb for this minister.
The holy will that the ancestors of the Song family had received had been obeyed by the Song family for generations, and they still hadn't forgotten it until now. From the Song Dynasty to the present, it has been more than eight hundred years, and the Song family has produced thirteen generations of tomb keepers
Picture: Stills of the power of the entire family to guard the tomb
Nowadays, the name of the tomb keeper of the Song family is Song Kecheng, who was originally guarded by his father, but his father died at a very young age, in order to keep his promise, Song Kecheng's mother took the stick and began the life of guarding the tomb.
Later, Song Kecheng took over the responsibility of guarding the tomb from his mother, and kept it for sixty-five years.
During this long time of guarding the tomb, the number of times Song Kecheng went out may not be as many as the number of times others went out in a month. His eldest daughter married to Hebei, and he went to see it once. Although the others were not in his hometown, his heart had always been guarding the tomb for the minister. Because there is a gold head in the tomb that all tomb robbers want to take away.
It is said that Yu Yunwen did not die naturally at that time, but like Yue Fei, he was wrongfully killed after winning the battle. Later, the emperor learned that the chancellor was a loyal servant and admitted that he had killed him by mistake. But people are dead, and regret cannot be saved.
In order to apologize to the dead Yu Yunwen, the emperor used pure gold to build a human head for Yu Yunwen to accompany the burial.
After a long time, no one knows whether this matter is true or not, but those grave robbers have always felt that it is true.
One night in 1999, Song Kecheng suddenly heard a strange noise, hurried up, and sure enough, he found a group of tomb robbers. There were six tomb robbers in total, and one was successfully captured by Song Kecheng's son.
Fortunately, in order to protect cultural relics, the state specially equipped Song Kecheng with a fire hammer, otherwise, let alone catching the tomb robber, it would have been very good without being injured.
Nowadays, the fire hammer that has accompanied Song Kecheng for a long time is no longer available, but it always reminds Song Kecheng and makes him not forget the duty of a tomb keeper.
In the long years of guarding the tomb, Song Kecheng formed the habit of sacrifice, usually cleaning the cemetery and making sacrifices three times a month. If he encounters someone who goes to worship, he will show the way for those who come to worship and tell them the story of the minister.
Now, Song Kecheng is too old to be a tomb keeper anymore, because his son is not at home, so the responsibility of guarding the tomb is given to his daughter-in-law. Since the 1980s, Song Kecheng's identity as a tomb keeper has been recognized by the state, and later relevant documents have been issued to him, and he has also begun to enjoy formal wages.
In 2004, the government expanded the tomb to continue the story.
In addition to Yu Yunwen's tomb, Genghis Khan's tomb also has a special tomb guard team.
Before his death, Genghis Khan left a last word for his descendants to bury his crown tomb on the Ordos Plateau. His descendants obeyed his last wishes after his death and specially transferred his guards to be tomb keepers.
These tomb guards were the Dalhuth, and the team didn't need to do anything else, just guard the khan's tomb and do a good job of sacrifice. For the rest of their lives, they could only wear plain clothes to the cemetery, and they were also Mongolian clothes.
However, they still enjoy regular salaries in normal times
Image from the Internet: The Tomb of Genghis Khan
After the death of Yuan Chonghuan of the Ming Dynasty, his subordinates took his head back to his hometown for burial.
This subordinate, surnamed Yu, buried Yuan Chonghuan and let his family guard the tomb.
It was only the words of this subordinate surnamed Yu that his family had become tomb keepers for generations, and it was not until the seventeenth generation that they continued to guard the tomb
。 The Yu couple once walked around in a relationship, and finally got the opportunity to protect Yuan Chonghuan's cemetery.
However, after the cemetery was protected, it could no longer be inhabited, so they had to leave the cemetery where they had lived for so long.
Image from the Internet: Yuan Chonghuan's tomb
Now, the cemetery can no longer be built at will, and there is no longer a need for tomb keepers. Those generations of tomb keepers, just like the dreams of the past, quietly fell asleep, making people alarmed and then quietly left.
Article author: Dahui
The entire graphic was produced by the team of the Big Cafe Say History Studio!