What is history: it is the echo of the past to the future, the reflection of the future on the past. - Hugo
Dingling, located in the eastern foothills of Dayu Mountain in Beijing, is one of the Ming Tombs, where the Ming Emperor Wanli Emperor Zhu Yijun and his empress are buried, because the Wanli Emperor reigned for 48 years, and the date of construction of the Dingling Tomb was in the twelfth year of the Wanli Calendar (1584 AD), it can be said that this is the longest and most expensive imperial tomb in the entire Ming Dynasty, which took 6 years and cost 8 million silver taels. At that time, the Ming Dynasty was briefly revitalized by Wanli Zhongxing, and the national treasury was still abundant, so the specifications and grades of the Dingling Tomb were relatively higher than those of other imperial tombs.
Wanli Emperor Zhu Yijun
In 1620, in the 48th year of the Wanli Calendar, Zhu Yijun died and officially entered the Dingling Tomb that had been waiting for him for more than thirty years. According to records, the burial items in the Dingling Tomb are rich in luxury, because the Wanli Emperor not only slacked off in his administration in the middle and late period of his reign, but also liked to accumulate wealth, and the mining taxes and silver collected in various places were one of them, and these incomes did not enter the treasury, but into the internal treasury, that is, the emperor's private money, so the small treasury of Wanli was quite abundant.
However, although Zhu Yijun was greedy for money, his internal funds were not all to satisfy his own poor and extravagant desires, and the history books record that during the Wanli calendar years, Zhu Yijun repeatedly paid for disaster relief and military salaries under the condition that there was not much money in the state treasury, which was also a good thing.
Exterior view of Dingling Tomb
How Dingling was excavated, this has to go back to 1956, when several important people in China's cultural and archaeological circles, Wu Han, Shen Yanbing, Guo Moruo and others formulated a "Report on the Excavation of ming changling tombs", which was approved by the leaders, who of course approved it out of the study of national culture, but did not expect that this report would soon bring disaster to the Dingling Tombs not far from Changling.
Everything seemed to be providential, but the Changling tomb that originally wanted to be excavated was escaped because Wu Han, Guo Moruo and others temporarily changed their minds, and the object of excavation was turned to the Dingling Tomb of the Wanli Emperor. It is said that the excavation of Changling at that time was forced to abandon because it could not find the entrance to the underground palace at all, and the excavation team encountered major problems. The reason for choosing Dingling is actually that the Dingling Tomb was built later than the Changling Tomb, and the ground buildings are relatively well preserved and more convenient to restore.
However, at that time, our country was still poor, and the cultural relics were protected and the excavation technology was very backward, and the imperial tomb was rushed to open, and the result could only be to satisfy the curiosity of some people, and then bring about permanent disasters.
The entrance to the Dingling Underground Palace was also found by chance, when the leader of the archaeological excavation team Zhao Qichang led the team members to explore the Dingling Tomb, inadvertently found a local city brick in the corner of Boseong that collapsed a little, more than three meters from the ground, a team member climbed up through the ladder to take a look, and found that a black hole was exposed inside, next to which was vaguely built of different city bricks, it was obvious that there was another Qiankun behind it.
The entrance to the Dingling Underground Xuangong was thus displayed in front of the archaeological team, and the entrance was discovered, and then the excavation work was fully engaged. It was a huge project, and the excavation committee hired more than 60 farmers from the villages around the Tombs to participate. However, there was no advanced detection technology at that time, the underground Xuangong was so large, and it was impossible to send several experts to drill in from the small entrance if you wanted to go in archaeology, so you could only use the trenching method to find the gate of the underground palace.
On May 17, 1956, the first shovel soil excavated in Dingling was dug up, and the method at that time was very earthy, and the hired farmers directly took the shovels for farm work, so the excavation process caused damage to the mausoleum.
How hard is the gate of the underground palace of Dingling to find? The archaeological team dug for a whole year, and on May 19, 1957, the Diamond Wall of the Dingling Underground Palace was discovered. At that time, the briefing was published, the entire academic circles were sensationalized, and countless scholars excitedly traveled thousands of miles to Dingling just to wait for the moment when the underground palace was opened, and for the sake of confidentiality, there were still quite a few people allowed to enter, especially foreigners, who were far away.
The secret of Dingling was thus exposed to the world, and after the gate of the local palace was opened, the archaeologists wearing gas masks and holding flashlights crossed the underground tomb passage and entered the front hall that had been sealed for more than 300 years, and the front hall displayed many stone carvings, the porcelain cylinder containing the oil of the long lamp lamp, and the extinguished candlestick, which appeared empty and did not see any burial items.
The coffins of the Wanli Emperor and the two empresses were missing, and later the archaeological team searched the front hall and the east and west halls and did not find it, just when everyone was at a loss, the news came from the apse, the coffin was found, and the three coffins were lying in the apse. The apse is the main part of the underground palace, which is taller than the front nave, 30.1 meters long from north to south, 9.1 meters wide from east to west, and 9.5 meters high from the ground to the top of the ticket. The ground is paved with spotted stone, delicate and smooth, far better than today's ordinary ceramic floor tiles. And in the middle of the middle of the hall, on the three coffin beds stand side by side three coffins of vermilion lacquer, which are the coffins of the Wanli Emperor, Empress Xiaoduanxian, and Empress Xiaojing (the successor monarch posthumously sealed)!
Zhu Yijun did not expect that more than 300 years after his death, there was a chance to see the light of day again, but this way is a bit.
The biggest destruction of Dingling was to deal with the coffin of the empress, at that time the technology was backward, the coffin was almost opened in a hurry, and did not consider how to dispose of the bones, probably the focus was on the funerary products, the body of the Wanli Emperor had long been decayed, only the bones were left, but the attire could still be seen clearly, wearing an embroidered costume, a jade belt around the waist, wearing a black silk wing crown, wearing yellow silk pants, and red satin high embroidered boots.
At that time, the valuable cultural relics in the Dingling Tomb were placed in a vermilion lacquered wooden box that was buried on the side, a total of 29, and the boxes were filled with gold and silver ware, crowns, belts, pendants, ornaments, bronze tin ware, weapons, tantra books, treasures and wooden figurines, a total of 2648 pieces, many of which were first seen. There are still hundreds of funerary items in other coffins, including the emperor's belt and brocade, and the total number of cultural relics is more than 3,000.
Golden Silk Wing Good Crown
The excavation of Dingling was an absolutely wrong decision, at that time the country was still poor, it was impossible to withdraw a large amount of budget to preserve these cultural relics, and many precious cultural relics were even packed in cardboard boxes and piled in the storage room of the institute, which was put for several years! Many silk fabrics that are easy to carbonize are arbitrarily packed in boxes and taken out, and as a result, they are soon blackened and become a pile of debris. At that time, many of the staff were non-professional, some precious porcelain picked up and played with in their hands, inadvertently damaged a lot, many paper classics did not have the opportunity to see the light of day, because they were not reasonable to preserve, quickly turned into ashes. The bones and coffins of the Wanli Emperor were not spared, and the end is not easy to say here, see the comment area later.
Fortunately, after the excavation of the Dingling Tomb, the relevant state departments realized that we did not have the conditions to excavate the imperial tomb at present, and later, Guo Moruo and others proposed a plan to excavate the Qianling Tomb (the joint burial tomb of Emperor Gaozong of Tang and Wu Zetian), which was rejected by Premier Zhou. The state has also set a major iron law in the archaeological community, and it will never allow the excavation of imperial tombs easily from now on.