As an ancient city with a long history of culture, Xuzhou is a place where soldiers and families must compete due to convenient transportation, and it is also the birthplace of the two Han cultures. Archaeologists have found more than 300 Han tombs here, of which the spectacular one is the Guishan Han Tomb.
The whole mountain looks like a huge turtle, with its head facing south and its tail facing north, hence the name Turtle Mountain. During the excavation process, archaeologists also inadvertently discovered the Tomb of Guishan Han.
In the 1970s, because Xuzhou City had to carry out the renovation of houses and roads as a whole, in order to extract stone, it was used as a quarry in the place of Guishan, and in the process of mining, the mystery of the thousand-year-old Han tomb was exposed and displayed in front of the world.
01 Who built the Guishan Han Tomb, so luxurious?
When it comes to the Tomb of Guishan Han, we have to talk about Liu Bang first, one of the most important reasons why Liu Bang can get the world is that he knows people and is good at his duties, before the uprising, Liu Bang was originally a street hooligan, at the bottom of society.
But he was open-minded, dared to struggle, and conformed to the will of the people, and launched an uprising of troops. Liu Bang's first vassal state with the same surname as Liu Bang was the State of Chu, Liu Jiao was Liu Bang's half-brother, he often followed Liu Bang's side, helped him with advice, the wise brother was talented, Liu Bang appointed him as a military aircraft staff officer often traveled to fight in various places, it can be said that Liu Bang created the entire Han Dynasty credit also Liu Jiao, he is also one of the founders of the Han Dynasty.
Liu Bang used this virtuous brother very much and gave him a lot of glory and wealth. In order to emulate Emperor Gaozu, Liu Jiao also adopted a burial system of building a mausoleum on the mountain, enjoying nearly endless wealth before he died, even after death, he had to be brought into the tomb, so Liu Jiao chose the place of Guishan in Xuzhou to build a group of Han tombs, and buried all the rare treasures he possessed before his death into the tomb.
Until modern times, archaeologists were surprised to find all the high-grade cultural relics in this Guishan No. 1 tomb group, which had not been excavated.
02 Guishan No. 2 Han Tomb was looted empty, how did the tomb robbers succeed in not moving the stone?
With the discovery of Guishan No. 1 Han Tomb, archaeologists have discovered Guishan No. 2 Mausoleum, which is the tomb of Liu Jiao's great-grandson Liu Zhuzhi, the King of Chuxiang of the Western Han Dynasty, but unfortunately Liu Jiao's Han tomb is well preserved, and the funerary items are not lacking, and the No. 2 Han Tomb of great-grandson Liu Zhu has been patronized by tomb robbers.
At the site of the exploration and excavation, archaeologists found that the No. 2 Guishan Han Tomb is a tomb of husband and wife, the south is the tomb of Liu Zhu, the king of Chuxiang, and the north is the tomb of his wife. Both tombs are horizontal cave type tombs, the whole width of 33 meters, a total of 15 burial chambers, like a mountain palace.
However, to the surprise of archaeologists, why is such a large tomb empty? Could it be that he was patronized by grave robbers? However, the stone in the middle of the tomb is intact, how did the tomb robbers get in?
After careful investigation and study, archaeologists found that the stone in Liu Zhu's tomb on the south side had indeed not been moved, while the stone in his wife's stone on the north side had been sucked away by someone.
Because the two burial chambers are interconnected, and the distance is not far, leaving a small hole or wooden plank bridge in the middle can go to the other side, which seems to be a move with the times, but it provides convenience for tomb robbers, as long as a Yongdao stone is opened to a layer, it can easily and successfully loot the two king-level tombs.
After cleaning up the scene, archaeologists found that although Liu Zhu's tomb was missing some funerary utensils, many small pieces of jade, carriage and horse tools, including pottery figurines, were not stolen by tomb thieves, and archaeologists speculated that these tomb robbers may not have looked at these small items, in order to quickly close hands without being discovered, they left these small objects at the scene.
In any case, these funerary objects provide the most important value clues for archaeologists to study the history of the Han Dynasty. Looking at the entire Guishan Han Tomb, its engineering volume is huge and majestic, and it is known as "a must in China" and "a wonder of the ages". It has left a thick cultural trace and imprint in the long river of history.