Ming Ding Mausoleum is the first planned, organized and active excavation of the imperial tomb approved by the State Council in New China, the tortuous excavation process and fruitful archaeological achievements have caused a sensation in the world, but later, a large number of precious cultural relics were damaged due to improper protection, the red lacquer coffin was abandoned for no reason, and the bones of the empress were artificially burned... Even after more than half a century, this painful lesson in the history of Chinese archaeology still makes countless archaeologists sigh.
This article is from the B06 of the December 31 issue of the Beijing News Book Review Weekly, "I Dig For Antiquities in China: A Hundred Years of Chinese Archaeology".
"Theme" B01丨I dig up antiquities in China: A Hundred Years of Chinese Archaeology
"Theme" B02-03丨I dig up antiquities in China
Theme B04-05 | Sanxingdui with a group of archaeologists in recourse
"Theme" B06-07 丨Ming Ding Mausoleum: An Exploration and Regret of Imperial Tomb Culture
"Literature" B08-09 丨Wen Wang's Mansion: Exploring the Legend of Shang Zhou in the Qishan Mountains
"Literature" B10-11 丨 Yin Ruins: Uncovering the Secrets of the Tombs of The Nobles of the Shang Dynasty
"Literature" B12 丨 Book List: Footprints Left by Archaeologists
Details of the published content are at:
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(This article is the B06 edition of the special issue of "I Dig Antiquities in China: A Hundred Years of Chinese Archaeology" on December 31, 2021, reporting on the B06 edition of "Ming Ding Ling: Exploration and Regret of the Imperial Tomb Culture", and the full text of the main manuscript of "I Dig Antiquities in China" is about to be launched, so stay tuned.) ）
Written by | Chen Xubin
01
Before excavation: changed from Changling to Dingling
On October 13, 1955, Guo Moruo received a letter from Wu Han, then vice mayor of Beijing. Neizhong said: "Elder Guo: The excavation of the Changling Tomb and the discussion with all parties have expressed their approval. Prepare a draft report to the State Council, whether it is available or not, please consider and correct it. Please take the lead, Fan Wenlan, Shen Yanbing, Deng Tuo, zhang Su will all sign in favor. ”
Changling is the mausoleum of Zhu Di, the ancestor of Ming Cheng, the largest of the Ming Tombs, located at the southern foot of the main peak of Tianshou Mountain in changping district of Beijing today.
Two days later, a report led by Guo Moruo, Shen Yanbing, Deng Tuo, Fan Wenlan, Wu Han, and Zhang Su was sent to the State Council. According to the report, the excavation of Zhu Di Changling has two major practical significance: (1) the establishment of an underground museum for people to visit, "not only can enrich historical knowledge, but also will make this ancient imperial mausoleum a world-class attraction" ;(2) Changling has no record of theft, after excavation, "will have great contributions to the study of historical events in the early Ming Dynasty", "is the most complete historical material for the study of past imperial tombs". The report also claims that there is a map of the underground structure of the Qingling Tombs of the Construction Society, and that the Changling Tombs will be "carefully excavated, and it is estimated that there will not be much difficulty." Despite opposition (such as Xia Nai and Zheng Zhenduo), the report was approved in principle.
Dingling plaque.
However, in the end, it was not the Changling Tomb that was excavated, but the Dingling Tomb of Zhu Yijun, the Ming Dynasty.
There are many different ways to say why. According to the biography of Zheng Zhenduo, Zheng Zhenduo "believes that it is inappropriate to rush to excavate Changling with many specific problems such as people's awareness of cultural relics protection, cultural relics protection means and scientific and technological level in research, and the financial resources of the state at that time", so he wrote a separate report to the State Council, saying that "if you must dig, it is recommended to excavate Dingling first, take Dingling as a pilot, and after summarizing the experience, then consider excavating Changling." After all, compared with Dingling, the scale of Changling is much larger, "there are definitely many more treasures underground, and once excavated, there is no proper and foolproof protection method, then the consequences will be unimaginable." Zhao Qichang's statement said that the excavation of the Dingling Tomb was the opinion of the archaeological team: "After the investigation of the Thirteen Tombs, the task force put forward its opinion that the Changling Tomb is the main mausoleum, and it should first select a point to test excavation, accumulate some experience, and then excavate the Changling Tomb to avoid mistakes." In the end, between Zhu Gaozi's Dedication Tomb and Zhu Yijun's Dingling Tomb, the larger Dingling tomb was selected as the object of test excavation.
According to Wu Han's report to the State Council on November 23, 1955, the original plan of the Changling Excavation Committee was to first excavate the Yongling Tomb of Emperor Ming Shizong Zhu Houxi. It was not until April 1956 that it was decided to excavate the Dingling Tomb first, on the grounds that "the Dingling Tomb has been exposed (Note: it refers to the collapse of city bricks outside the Treasure City)... Although the scale is small, compared with Changling, it is estimated that the structure is roughly the same, which can gain some experience for the development of Changling." In March of the same year, Changping County, where Changling and Dingling were located, was transferred from Hebei to Beijing.
On May 17, 1956, the excavation of Dingling was officially launched. This is also the first time after 1949 that China has actively excavated imperial tombs.
The Golden Jujue Cup, decorated with golden dragons, is placed in a tray of Erlong Ju beads, surrounded by a flower noodle made of pearls and gemstones, which is even more magnificent. It is the gold vessel with the highest gold content among the gold vessels unearthed from Dingling, and the whole Jinjue Cup is cleverly conceived, beautifully shaped, ornately decorated, with a strong sense of stability, and has high artistic value.
02
Excavation in progress: a process of twists and turns
Different from the tomb robbery for wealth, the core purpose of the archaeological excavation of the mausoleum is to preserve and obtain historical information, and the protection of cultural relics must be the first priority. Naturally, it is impossible to adopt the Technique of Opening the Way with Explosives in the Style of Sun Dian, nor is it appropriate to dig up all the sealing soil from top to bottom, which is equivalent to destroying the original structure of the mausoleum. In the words of Zhao Qichang, who was deeply involved in the archaeological excavation, the only appropriate way is to "enter from where the ancients were buried, and the archaeology of the present people must also enter along the entrance and the old road of the year." That is, to find the place where the coffin was buried.
Generally speaking, the Ming Dynasty imperial tombs will have ticket gates under the Ming Dynasty tombs, leading to the treasure city where the coffins of the empress are placed. If you find the ticket gate, you will find the entrance to the mausoleum. However, dingling is somewhat special, the Ming Building does not have a ticket door, and where the coffin is buried has become a mystery. Fortunately, the survey phase found a gap formed by the collapse of the brick wall on the south side of the outside of Boseong. Inside the gap , " although it was bricked , there were obviously traces of demolition " , and the team speculated that it was possible to pass through the empress when she was buried. This is where the official excavations begin. On 19 May 1956, the team excavated a north-south trench on the inner seal of the Boseong City Wall, 3.5 meters wide and 20 meters long, exactly opposite the outer gap. When digging the trench, the words "Tunnel Gate", "Golden Wall Front Skin", "Treasure City", "Right Road", "Left Road", "Big Middle" and so on were found on the stone strips on the inner side of the Boseong City Wall. This means that the trench is opened in the right place. As the excavations deepened, a brick-sealed ticket gate was soon revealed in Boseong, which connected to a brick tunnel. The task force judged that this ticket gate was the "tunnel gate" written on the stone strip, and it was also the entrance of the empress's coffin into Boseong.
After finding the entrance, in order to reduce the amount of manual excavation and earthwork and to preserve the pine trees above the treasure roof as much as possible from damage, the team decided to carry out a jump excavation, crossing a section of brick tunnel and excavating a second trench. As a result, the trench opened at the end of the brick tunnel. On 2 September 1956, the team found a small stone tablet at the end of the tunnel with the inscription: "This stone is sixteen feet deep and three feet and five feet deep in front of the Diamond Wall." Some people think that this stele may be a trap, a fake road monument deliberately set up to prevent tomb robbers, designed to lead tomb robbers to dangerous places. After analysis, the task force believes that the Dingling Tomb was built by the Wanli Emperor before his death, and after it was completed, it was buried and closed, and then excavated when Wanli was buried, "Just imagine, the empress's death date does not dare to predict, once dead, the time limit is excavated, for a while it is impossible to find the way, can not be completed in time, then it is necessary to kill the head!" Judging from the location of the stele and the roughness of its production, it would not be a necessary facility in the cemetery system, but a sign reserved by the foreman for the convenience of future work. The inscription on that small stone tablet should be credible. "The follow-up work referred to the instructions of the road monument, excavated the third trench, and successfully achieved a jump forward to find the stone tunnel, which confirmed that the instructions of the road monument were correct.
On 19 May 1957, the team discovered a brick diamond wall at the end of a stone tunnel. At this point, exactly one year after the excavation was launched.
Open the Kongo Wall to enter the interior of the mausoleum. But rumors followed. Zhao Qichang, who was deeply involved in the excavations, recalled: "Since the time I decided to excavate the underground palace, various theories have come to me. Some say that the emperor's mausoleum is full of dark arrows, and the arrows are soaked with poisonous juice, and they will die when they are touched. It is also said that after the tomb door, there are thousands of pounds of stones on the top, and there are sliding pedals under it, and if you are not careful, you will either crush your bones or lose your foot in the abyss. Someone else solemnly wrote, 'Have you ever seen a bird-catching cage set up by a hunter on a mountain?' There was a skateboard on it, and when the bird fell on it, the board immediately flipped over and fastened the bird in the cage. Hunters are afraid that the birds will starve to death, and often put some food in the cage, and the pedals in the burial chamber may not have such a good treatment. The migrant workers and their families involved in the excavation were very uneasy, and the archaeologists would rather believe that they had it than believe that they did not have it, in case there were really "flying knives, dark arrows, and poisonous gas" in the underground palace, it was really a big pit after entering the door, "the pit was planted with sharp sharp knives, and the pit was covered with stone strips, and people who did not know the situation, one foot was wrong, the stone strips would turn people over into the pit, the stone strips on the top smashed, and the sharp knives below were pierced", then it would be too late to regret it. Guo Moruo, Deng Tuo, Wu Han and others also "came to the scene several times and repeatedly advised them to pay attention to personal safety."
In order to ensure everything, the team decided to put a dog in after opening a hole in the Wall of Kongo to see if there was anything like poison gas. Some people worried that putting the dog in might "cut out the contents", so they changed it to chickens. Unfortunately, the two times the chicken was thrown into the hole failed, "it was dark inside, the hole was bright, the chicken did not fly to the black", but flew out of the hole with a scream and fled. In the end, there was no way but to send someone down. Pang Zhongwei, an archaeologist involved in the excavations, recalled that the selected people often had a difficult face, and when he was called by name, he was also "empty in his mind, as if everything around him had disappeared at once." Finally, the migrant workers and archaeologists, totaling seven or eight people, climbed the opening of the cave located at a height of 3 meters above the Kongo Wall, and then slowly entered the underground palace one by one by one by the bamboo ladder. The crowd confirmed that there was no poison gas inside the Wall of Kongo, nor were there flying knives and dark arrows. In order to prevent the flap trap, still be careful when traveling, use crutches to explore the way, knock left, knock right, and knock in the middle to confirm that there is no problem before taking a step.
Past the Wall of Kongo, there is a huge stone gate. The stone door is carved from a single piece of white jade, and the upper shaft is placed inside the thick copper beam pipe fan, which is covered with "tap stone", and it is impossible to push it directly from the outside. The so-called "tap stone" is actually a kind of automatic locking mechanism common in ancient tombs. The basic working principle is: (1) a groove is chiseled into the ground not far from the two stone doors and facing the middle of the stone door, and one end of the tapestry will be topped in this groove; (2) in the middle of the side of the two stone doors facing the room, a raised stone barrier (both doors are present, and next to each other), and the other end of the tapestry will be pushed into this stone barrier in the future. After the emperor is buried, the craftsmen will first close one of the stone doors, the other half-hidden, the lower end of the tapest stone is embedded in the ground groove, the upper end is slightly inclined against the stone barrier of the half-hidden stone door, the half-hidden stone door is slowly closed, and the tapest stone gradually coincides with the raised stone barrier, and finally when the stone door is completely closed, the tap stone can hold two doors at the same time. It is actually a common top door stick in ordinary farmhouses.
The working principle of tap stone is simple, and it is naturally easy to crack. The method used in the excavation of Dingling was to use an iron slat and make an opening in the upper end of it, which was used to jam the upper end of the top door stone (to prevent it from slipping and breaking). Then everyone pushed forward with force, pushing the top door stone away from the raised stone ridge on the inside of the stone door, making it stand upright, and then the door could be easily pushed open. The other gates in the dungeon with tapestries were opened in the same way.
At this point, the entire Dingling Underground Palace was all presented in front of the eyes of the world. Its underground building has three front, middle and rear halls and left and right side halls, a total of five rooms, and seven stone doors. Among them, the three coffins of the Wanli Emperor and Empress Xiaoduan and Empress Xiaojing wangshi are parked in the apse. One archaeologist involved in the excavation recalled the look and feel of the time: "It was terrible! Three red coffins, nearly one person high, were eerily parked on the coffin bed. "These coffins have not been destroyed before, and the burial items are complete, providing a real basis for the study of the Ming Dynasty imperial tomb system." A total of 2,648 artifacts of various kinds (excluding coins and buttons) were unearthed throughout dingling. Among them, the largest number of textiles and clothing, a total of 644 pieces, mainly silk fabrics. For the study of silk weaving technology, processing technology and empress dowager clothing system in the Ming Dynasty, direct materials were provided. In addition, there are 289 pieces of gold, 271 pieces of silverware, 65 pieces of bronze, 370 pieces of pewter, 51 pieces of jade, 84 pieces of lacquerware, and 248 pieces of jewelry.
Red Su Luo embroidered flat gold dragon hundred flowers square collar women's jacket.
03
After excavation: damage to cultural relics
According to common sense, the archaeological engineering of the mausoleum can be divided into two parts: excavation work and cultural relics collation, restoration and preservation work. In July 1958, the excavation of Dingling was basically completed, and the underground palace was slightly renovated into the "Dingling Museum", which was officially opened to the public on National Day in 1959. However, the work of sorting out, restoring and preserving cultural relics has almost completely stagnated. Not only has it stagnated, but there has also been a serious problem of damage to cultural relics.
There are many reasons for the destruction of Dingling cultural relics. The first is that the restoration and preservation technology of cultural relics at that time was seriously insufficient. The silk fabrics unearthed from Dingling are not only huge in number, but also have a wide variety of weavers, and the weavers are meticulous, and on each roll of silk fabrics, there are also waist seals, written with size, time, place of origin and texture, which can be said to be extremely rare research materials. Experts at the time used a polymethyl methacrylate toluene solution to reinforce the unearthed silk fabrics, and the results were initially good, and after some time, the treated silk fabrics began to lose their luster, softness and elasticity, and not only became black and hard but also brittle. In addition, at that time, there was no constant temperature and humidity to protect the light of the warehouse for preserving cultural relics, resulting in the serious damage to most of these silk fabrics. Zhao Qichang, who participated in the excavation, once sighed helplessly: "The damage did not occur at the beginning of the excavation, but after the excavation, which was never expected." ”
Secondly, some of the staff involved in this matter seriously lack the awareness of cultural relics protection, and the historical knowledge is also seriously lacking. In order to meet the exhibition needs of the Dingling Museum, a replica was made for the coffin of the Wanli Emperor at that time. After the replica was made, one of the rulers of the Dingling Museum ordered the original coffin to be thrown into the ravine as garbage. Since then, the original coffin of the Wanli Emperor has disappeared without a trace. What is displayed in the underground palace today is still a replica of that year. Turning to the book "Dingling in the Underground Palace" published by the Cultural Relics Publishing House in 1958 and compiled by the "Dingling Task Force of the Changling Excavation Committee", you can also see that "In March 1644, the Qing army invaded Beijing. The Chongzhen Emperor, the last ruler of the Ming Dynasty, hanged himself from a tree in Jingshan Mountain", such a sentence that is obviously historically wrong.
The golden crown, also known as the golden silk wing crown, consists of three parts, the front house, the back mountain and the two corners. The front house refers to the hat shell part, the craftsman is using the method of "weaving the lantern empty", from top to bottom with 518 fine gold wires with a diameter of 0.2 mm hand-woven, due to the skill of the craftsmen, the weaving pattern is not only uniform, dense and consistent, but also no knots in the middle, it looks as thin as light yarn, the semi-circular hat hill stands up with two gold wire mesh pieces like rabbit ears, that is, two corners, commonly known as "yarn hat wings", the front of the back mountain is a wonderful two dragon play bead pattern, the shape of the golden dragon is vivid and powerful, majestic, This is also the most difficult part of the golden crown production process, according to expert identification, the dragon head, dragon body, dragon claw, dorsal fin and other parts are made separately, welded and assembled with the overall pattern. The crown of only dragon scales used 8400 pieces, which requires craftsmen not only to spend a lot of effort when welding, but also to accumulate years of work experience, master the appropriate heat, in order to complete such a difficult craft products, so the preciousness of the golden crown in addition to the texture of all gold wire, but also in the overall drawing, weaving, welding and other aspects of superb skills. At present, the golden crown is the only one in China, which can be called a national treasure.
The background of the times made it difficult to carry out the subsequent restoration and protection of cultural relics, not only was it difficult to carry out, but in 1966, the bones of the Wanli Emperor were publicly smashed and burned to ashes in the Dingling Museum Square. Guo Moruo was bitter about this, he had hoped that by examining Wanli's bones, he would find out what disease he had, why he had become a cripple, and the bones were burned, so there was no chance to study. Wu Han was also heartbroken, he once suspected that Wanli had smoked a lot of smoke before his death, hoping to confirm or falsify it by testing the bones, "but a fire, don't think about anything." The excavation of Dingling was largely completed in 1958, but the complete excavation report of Dingling was not officially published until 1990.
The damage to cultural relics caused by insufficient technical capabilities after the excavation of Dingling was a wake-up call for the Chinese archaeological community at that time. The excavation plan of Zhu Di's Changling Tomb was abandoned, and then in 1961, the State Council issued a notice to the whole country in accordance with the opinions of the Chinese Academy of Sciences (Institute of Archaeology) that the imperial tombs were not allowed to be excavated at will. Since then, the impulse to excavate imperial tombs across the country has not been approved. In 1997, the State Council issued the "Notice on Strengthening and Improving cultural relics", which for the first time clearly stipulated: "Because the conditions of science and technology and means for the protection of cultural relics are not yet available, the active excavation of large-scale imperial tombs will not be carried out for the time being." "The deep regret of the excavation of Dingling has been precipitated into a clear historical lesson. But it is not a blessing for those national treasures that are still sleeping under the earth.