The number of stolen imperial tombs in Chinese history is unknown, whether it is the Qin Emperor Han Wu or the Tang Emperor Song Zu, none of them can live in peace after death. But there is only one exception, that is, Wu Zetian, her Qianling has been intact until now, and even the national archaeological team does not dare to easily excavate qianling.
This has to start with Tang Taizong Li Shimin.
As a clever emperor, Li Shimin knew that there were no tombs that could not be dug up, especially imperial tombs. Therefore, in order not to be disturbed after a hundred years, when he built the Zhao Mausoleum for Empress Changsun, he created the burial system of "because the mountain is a mausoleum", that is, the mausoleum was built inside the mountain to increase the difficulty of tomb robbery.
In 628, Emperor Gaozong of Tang took the advice of his uncles Changsun Wuji and Taishi Ling Li Chunfeng and chose the location of his mausoleum at Liangshan in Qianxian County, Shaanxi. However, this decision was strongly opposed by the state teacher Yuan Tiangang, who believed that the mausoleum site of Liangshan was like a woman lying there, and if it was an imperial mausoleum, Li Tangtianxia would probably be controlled by women.
Wu Zetian had ambitions, and after learning of Yuan Tiangang's statement, he insisted on setting up Emperor Gaozong's site in Liangshan. Emperor Gaozong's ears were soft, and he eventually chose Liangshan and named the mausoleum "Qianling".
In 683, Li Zhi died and Wu Zetian took power and began the construction of the Qianling Tombs. She requisitioned more than 200,000 civilian workers and soldiers, worked day and night for more than a year, built a Xuan Palace for Gaozong Lizhi on the mountainside of Liangshan, and relocated Gaozong to be buried here in August 684.
After burying Emperor Gaozong, Wu Zetian carried out a larger project construction on the basis of the original Qianling.
Liangshan is 1047 meters above sea level, is a limestone structure, the rock is hard, the project is extremely difficult, coupled with the huge amount of engineering designed by Wu Zetian, resulting in Qianling taking 22 years to basically complete. In 705, Wu Zetian died of illness, and Emperor Zhongzong of Tang opened qianling to bury her, making qianling the only imperial tomb in Chinese history where two emperors were buried.
Qianling was very large, almost a miniature version of Chang'an City. According to historical records, qianling "zhou eighty miles" is divided into inner and outer cities, and the inner city has four gates, namely Qinglong Gate, Suzaku Gate, White Tiger Gate, and Xuanwu Gate. The inner city is roughly a square structure, with a length of about 1450 meters from the north and south walls, 1582 meters from the east wall, and 1483 meters from the west wall, with a total area of about 2.3 million square meters. In the city, there are dedicated halls, partial houses, cloisters, que towers, and even the ancestral halls and lower palaces of 60 dynasties such as Di Renjie, which can be described as everything.
Because the Qianling tomb is built inside the mountain, merged with the whole mountain, coupled with the hard texture of the limestone, and the tomb's ingenious anti-tomb robbery device, it is difficult for the tomb robbers to find the tomb passage; even if they are lucky to find it, they cannot be planed, cannot be dug, and even the cannon is difficult to shake one or two.
Qianling is so large-scale, how many treasures are buried with it?
According to recent explorations and expeditions, archaeologists and cultural relics workers have conservatively estimated the Qianling treasure at least 500 tons!
When the burial items are calculated in terms of "tons", it is probably impossible to imagine the number of them. As for the treasures inside it, it is not something we can imagine.
If nothing else, as far as the ancient books are concerned, Wu Zetian's poetic works may be in Qianling.
Wu Zetian was quite accomplished in poetry, and wrote many poems during her lifetime, but except for three poems included in the Quan Tang Poems, the hundred volumes of the "Vertical Arch Collection" and the ten volumes of the "Golden Needle Collection" that contained her poems are missing. Therefore, historians believe that the "Vertical Arch Collection", the "Golden Needle Collection", and the portrait of Wu Zetian himself are most likely in qianling.
In addition, the original manuscript of Wang Xizhi's "Orchid Pavilion Preface", a top national treasure coveted by countless people since ancient times, may also have become the funeral of Wu Zetian.
Li Shimin was an iron fan of Wang Xizhi, and during his lifetime, he used rogue means to steal the original copy of the Orchid Pavilion Preface from the debater monk, and issued a decree as a funeral after his death. However, during the Five Dynasties period, the Zhaoling Tomb was stolen, and the tomb robbers found that there was no "Orchid Pavilion Sequence" in the Zhaoling Tomb, so it was inferred that the "Orchid Pavilion Preface" was most likely left behind by Li Zhi, who was also fond of calligraphy, and Li Zhi was buried in Qianling after his death as Wu Zetian.
How many treasures there are in Qianling is unknown, but the number and value are certainly incalculable, so that since the qianling was built more than a thousand years ago, it has triggered countless tomb robbery incidents, of which there are as many as 17 tomb robbers with names and surnames, and they are large and large-scale. Here are two examples.
The first to carry out large-scale excavation of Qianling was the Yellow Nest at the end of the Tang Dynasty, and people who have always lacked money have always had the idea of robbing tombs, Mo said that this leader of the peasant revolt was gone. The "Shaanxi Tongzhi" records that Huang Chao lacked military resources that year, so he sent the general Wang Pan to lead 400,000 troops to excavate Qianling. After digging a large ditch about 40 meters deep in Liangshan, the entrance to Qianling was still not found, and Because the officers and soldiers pursuing the crackdown were about to arrive, Wang Pan had no choice but to withdraw his troops. This theft left a large deep ditch on the west side of Liangshan, which still exists today, and is called "Huangchao Ditch".
In the early years of the Republic of China, the Guanzhong warlord Sun Lianzhong sent troops to blow up the sealing stones of the Qianling Tomb Road in the name of military exercises, but he could not find the entrance. When the soldiers were digging east and west, a sudden gust of wind blew up, and it was dark for an instant, followed by a thunderstorm that did not stop for several days. Thinking of the strange events related to Qianling circulating in the local area, the soldiers were scattered and fled. This vision was half-believed and doubted even by Sun Lianzhong himself, and the tomb robbery had to be abandoned.
Qianling is so difficult to steal, which is enough to show that Wu Zetian made sufficient efforts in anti-theft in those years, which made the thieves discouraged.
In the winter of 1958, migrant workers building the Sealand Highway accidentally discovered the entrance to the Qianling Tomb Road when they blew up stones on the north side of Liangshan Mountain, 1,000 meters away from the Wordless Monument. Half a century has passed, and the relevant departments have been applying for the excavation of Qianling, but they have not been approved by the state, and the reason why the state maintains a conservative attitude toward the excavation of Qianling is because there have been painful lessons before.
In 1956, when excavating the Dingling Tombs in the Ming Tombs, due to insufficient preparation and lack of technology, the gorgeous brocade that was originally intact turned black and hardened under the eyes of people, losing its cultural relics value. In order to prevent a repeat of the mistakes of the past, the state shelved the excavation of the main tomb of Qianling and only approved the excavation of five of the funerary tombs. The archaeological team found a large number of cultural relics in the five funerary tombs, and I believe that after our technology matures, there will be more surprising discoveries in Qianling.