In the history of the Ming Dynasty, there was a very controversial emperor, who was both an illustrator and a monarch. Moreover, because the emperor was angry with his ministers, he actually did not go to the court for thirty years. This person was emperor of the Ming Dynasty. During the reign of the Wanli Emperor, the Ming Dynasty was strong and powerful, and history called the Ming history of Wanli as "Wanli Zhongxing". But the Wanli Emperor could not have imagined that 300 years later, his mausoleum would actually be excavated, and it would become a sensational event in the world.
Where is Wanli buried?
The mausoleum of the Wanli Emperor is called "Dingling", which is one of the three major mausoleums of the Ming Dynasty (Chengzu Changling, Sejong Yongling, and Shenzong Dingling). Construction of the Dingling Tomb began in the twelfth year of the Wanli Calendar (1584) and was completed six years later, costing a total of 8 million taels of silver. After the dingling was completed, it was not opened until 1620 (the wanli emperor had a long lifespan), and the mausoleum was idle for 30 years.
Dingling covers an area of 180,000 square meters, with courtyards on the ground and a tall treasure city behind it. White jade bridge in front of the mausoleum gate. When Wanli first built the Dingling Tomb, he asked that the mausoleum be built in the style of his grandfather Sejong, and the tomb had more than 300 complete buildings of various kinds.
After Li Zicheng entered Beijing, some of the buildings on the ground of Dingling were destroyed by the rebel army. Li Zicheng withdrew from the capital, and after the Qing Dynasty entered the customs, some of the buildings in Dingling were destroyed. It was not until the time of the Qianlong Emperor that some of the buildings of Dingling were rebuilt, but the dimensions were reduced than before. However, The City of Baocheng, Chongmen, Mausoleum, and MingLou were not destroyed, and in general, throughout the Qing Dynasty, Dingling was a well-preserved imperial tomb.
The most puzzling thing in Dingling is that there is a wordless stele, and it has not been clear why there is no inscription. None of the 7 emperors' mausoleums before Dingling had a stele pavilion in front of them. The traitor Yan Song wanted Emperor Ming to write an inscription on his ancestors, but the Jiajing Emperor believed that the merits of his ancestors were evaluated by later generations, so the emperor no longer wrote inscriptions after the Ming Dynasty.
The Dingling Underground Palace was built 27 meters underground, where the coffins of Wanli and the Empress were found. The underground palace of Dingling is large in scale, and according to the data, it is recorded that it consists of five stone chambers (front room, middle room, left side hall, right side hall, and back room).
Why was it excavated?
Although Dingling is one of the three tombs in the Ming Dynasty, if we talk about its status, there is still a certain gap between this mausoleum and The Ming Dynasty Ancestor Zhu Di. In 1956, the seventh year of the founding of New China, Wu Han, the leader of Beijing at the time, and Guo Moruo, a famous historian, jointly reported instructions for excavating the Ming Dynasty mausoleum.
This report mainly requested the superiors to excavate the Changling Tomb of Ming Chengzu Zhu Di, when the state considered that excavating ancient tombs could further promote the study of history and culture, so it agreed to the request of Wu Guo and guo. 、
So Wu Guo and the two people led people to start excavation, because there is no professional archaeologist, the excavation work is hired to do the local people, these migrant workers do not understand the ancient tomb excavation knowledge at all, let alone experience.
However, when Zhu Di's Changling was excavated, the excavators did not even find the underground palace of the mausoleum, and at that time, due to the lack of advanced detection equipment and advanced excavation technology, the excavation team decided to abandon the excavation of the Changling Tomb and decided to excavate the Dingling Tomb that remained intact, so the excavation of the Wanli Emperor's mausoleum was put on the agenda.
When the local farmers wu guo and guo began to excavate the Dingling Tomb, because there were no professional excavation tools, only shovels, hoes and other agricultural tools, the Dingling tomb was dug indiscriminately for a year before the entrance to the underground palace was found.
But the entrance was found, and in the face of these ignorant diggers, it was the Diamond Wall that stood in their way. In the face of this wall, the migrant workers who excavated thought that there was a mysterious force in the tomb, and some of the excavating peasants were afraid of death and wanted to go home, but after ideological mobilization, they were finally left to continue digging.
As the saying goes: you can't "do porcelain work" without a "diamond diamond" in your hand. How do I open the King Kong Wall? It's the conundrum that stands in their way. Because Guo Lao and others also did not have the ancient tomb excavation technology, they had to forcibly dismantle a passage until the tomb door was opened.
The Wanli Emperor, who had been sleeping in the tomb for 300 years, finally saw the light of day. Moreover, in the coffins of Emperor Wan and his two empresses, a large number of burial items occurred, as well as countless gold, silver and jade jewelry, as many as more than three thousand pieces.
There are too many cultural relics excavated in Dingling, especially the clothes worn by the emperor and empress, which are all silk fabrics and are not properly kept by professionals. According to the records, the excavators actually framed the silk fabric with paste, and soon the clothes became hard and black, and they were damaged and could not be repaired.
There are also some ancient books that have not been properly kept, and they have been destroyed after seeing the air and sunlight.
Where did the Wanli skeleton go?
After the excavators opened the coffin, the Wanli Emperor and his two empresses were left with only skeletons. However, the Wanli Emperor's hair was still a little shiny.
The news that dingling tomb was excavated immediately attracted the attention of the world, after all, it was a huge imperial tomb, and too many precious cultural relics were found. However, since then, the Dingling Tomb has not been well preserved. According to the records, in the 1960s, Dingling was artificially destroyed as the "four olds" of feudalism, and the remains of the Wanli Emperor and the two empresses were also thrown out, and some people advocated putting firewood and burning, so a fire burned the bones of the Wanli Emperor and the two empresses into ashes, and it was not clear whether it was firewood ash or Wanli's ashes, which were thrown away as garbage.
Some people lamented that archaeologist Xia Nai once said thirty years after the Dingfu excavation: "If you dig now, the consequences will be better, and it may be better to postpone it for another thirty years." "But the fact that Mu has been a boat can no longer be reversed. After the self-determination tomb was excavated, the state has since stipulated that it will no longer take the initiative to excavate some imperial tombs, unless it is a protective excavation.