In the 1970s, three Han tombs were unearthed in Mawangdui Township, Changsha, Hunan Province, which shocked the world with their complete preservation and rich cultural relics, and were also one of the most important archaeological discoveries in the world in the 20th century.
In the mawangdui tomb, the female corpses that have not decayed after thousands of years have been unearthed, as well as detailed and rich books and paintings, exquisite lacquerware, silk clothing with the pinnacle of craftsmanship and technology, and countless grain crops from the Western Han Dynasty, filling many gaps in the mainland's study of the history and culture of the Western Han Dynasty.
In the process of excavating the Mawangdui tomb in the Western Han Dynasty, a bowl of lotus piece soup was unearthed, which was preserved under the sealed ancient tomb for two thousand years and was intact, but after the excavation opened the lid, because of the oxidation of the air, the lotus piece disappeared instantly, and even the soup became black.
Fortunately, when the lotus soup was unearthed, a photographer was quick-eyed and recorded this precious scene with photos, and we were able to witness the true appearance of this bowl of lotus soup two thousand years ago through audio and video materials.
Because of this lesson, archaeologists were careful in subsequent excavations, and finally preserved most of the precious cultural relics in the Tomb of Xiamawangdui.
Excavation of the Mawangdui tomb began and ended
In November 1971, a hospital in Mawangdui Township, Changsha City, Hunan Province, was responding to a state call to organize workers to dig air raid shelters in case the international situation changed.
The workers dug down from the soil layer near the hospital, in front of which was the common red soil in Hunan, but as they dug into the ground about thirty meters deep, the soil became somewhat different, obviously showing traces of artificial processing, and the originally tight soil layer became very soft.
Such a deep underground, how can there be traces of man-made, just when everyone is curious, some people shout at the excavation site of the air raid shelter.
It turned out to be a worker, who inserted the steel bar into the soil layer during the construction, but he did not expect that a pungent odor suddenly appeared from the hole where the steel bar was inserted, and when the worker lit a cigarette and wanted to rest for a while, the lit flame encountered this gas and actually burned.
At this point, everyone quickly ran out of the air raid shelter that had been dug tens of meters deep, lest the whole hole burn up, but there was not much gas coming out of it, and it would be extinguished after burning for a while.
Everyone looked at each other, no one dared to dig any more, some uneducated workers at the scene called the flames in the cave ghost fire, and the news that Mawangdui dug an air raid shelter and dug out a ghost fire also spread at once, and the knowledgeable people immediately notified the Hunan Museum, asking them to quickly send people to see it.
After receiving the news, the archaeologist staff of the Hunan Museum immediately realized that this is a fire cave commonly known in the archaeological community, and the material enclosed in the ancient tomb gradually decays after many years, and will form a gas that can burn, and this gas will form a fire hole after it comes out through a small hole.
And there is a fire cave, which means that this ancient tomb has not been excavated, nor has it been destroyed by tomb robbers, otherwise the gas inside has long been leaked out, and it is likely that there is an intact ancient tomb hidden in this air raid shelter of Mawangdui.
Therefore, the archaeologists did not care to pack their things, and with rudimentary tools such as hoes and flashlights, rushed to the site of the Mawangdui air raid shelter overnight.
After arriving at the scene, the staff did not excavate immediately, but carefully observed the surrounding terrain and the direction of the air raid shelter, and found that the air raid shelter with combustible gases was running east-west, and there was also a north-south air raid shelter intersecting with it.
Based on the depth and distance of the air raid shelter and the survey of the surrounding terrain, the staff of the Hunan Museum made a professional speculation that there was a very large tomb buried here, and there should be more than one tomb inside.
Such a large and well-preserved tomb is also very rare in the history of Chinese archaeology, and the archaeologists immediately asked the hospital to stop digging the air raid shelter, and at the same time reported to the State Administration of Cultural Heritage for instructions on the next excavation plan.
Under the instructions of the State Administration of Cultural Heritage, the Hunan Museum organized a conservation excavation, when materials were scarce, and the staff pieced together more than 100 flat loads and hoes, and started work in the cold wind.
Because of the shortage of manpower, the archaeologists and more than 20 workers, together with more than 20 workers, are digging up the soil on the excavation site, doing the same manual work, working from 8 a.m. to 5 p.m. every day, and they can't take care of rest all day.
But the scale of this tomb is still beyond the original expectations, with the deepening of excavation, archaeologists expect to clean up the entire tomb, need to excavate more than 10,000 cubic meters of earth, and such a amount of engineering, with the existing manpower do not know what year and month to dig.
In order to solve the shortage of manpower, the Hunan Museum has taken another approach, contacted more than ten colleges and universities in Changsha, and mobilized students to use their spare time to help excavate the Mawangdui tomb.
In February of the following year, Changsha entered a rainy rainy season, which made excavation more difficult, and in order to complete it as soon as possible, unless it rained heavily, the construction site would not stop working on ordinary rainy days.
Digging in the rainy season, not only very wet and slippery, but also at the risk of landslides, but seeing that an unprecedented large tomb is about to be unearthed, everyone's morale is very high, risking the rain to remove the water in the hole first, and then digging down day and night.
By early April, the soil layer around the tomb was basically cleared, and archaeologists found the last layer of white plaster mud, which is a kind of soil used to protect the tomb in ancient times, which is very well sealed, and inside the white plaster mud, it is a layer of grilled charcoal to prevent moisture.
Protected by both charcoal and white plaster, the identity of the owner of the tomb must be very noble under such a project.
At the bottom of the burial chamber, a complete chamber 6.72 meters long, 4.88 meters wide and 2.8 meters high was finally excavated, and finally according to the identification of archaeologists, this is the burial chamber of Xin Chai, the wife of Hou Licang, the chancellor of Changsha in the early years of the Western Han Dynasty.
In the entire tomb group of Mawangdui, in addition to Mrs. Xin Chai, there are two burial chambers of her husband Li Cang and Li Cang's son, among which the earliest excavated Xin Chai tomb chamber is the latest to be buried.
The entire Mawangdui tomb group is magnificent and complex, and a large number of precious cultural relics have been unearthed, including more than 3,000 pieces of silk clothing, books, paintings, Chinese herbal medicines and lacquerware, which provide complete and valuable cultural relics for the study of the history and culture of the early Western Han Dynasty.
Among them, the body of Xin Chai himself, after more than two thousand years, is still well preserved when it was excavated, which is also a miracle in the archaeological community.
When the lid of the coffin was untied, what everyone saw was the corpse wrapped in layers of silk fabrics, and when these silk fabrics were slowly uncovered, what came into everyone's eyes was the body of an elderly woman.
After thousands of years, the face of this body is still clear and changeable, there is still hair on the head, the skin on the face, eyelashes, and nose hairs are still left, and even the wig pinned with a hairpin at the back of the head can still be distinguished.
Touching Xin Chai's body with your hand can also feel the elasticity of the skin, which is also the oldest soft ancient corpse in the world that has been completely protected by artificial tombs.
In order to better study this ancient corpse, in 1972, the state also specially convened experts and professors from major medical schools across the country to Come to Changsha to jointly formulate the antipathy of dissecting the ancient corpse.
In the end, under the scalpel of medical experts, Xin Chaigu's corpse was removed from the brain tissue and internal organs without affecting the overall external image, and in her stomach, 138 melon seeds were found.
Xin Chai's body was well protected, and most of the many cultural relics unearthed at that time were also completely preserved under the meticulous excavations of archaeologists, but unfortunately, there was a bowl of precious lotus soup that could not escape the fate of seeing the light and dying.
See the soup of light dead lotus slices
In the archaeological community, how to preserve the newly excavated cultural relics has always been a big headache for archaeologists, and the same problem has been encountered in the excavation and protection of Mawangdui cultural relics.
Buried in ancient tombs and other historical sites, there are a large number of items and utensils that can reflect the historical and cultural customs of that time, these cultural relics can unravel the hazy veil of history after excavation, help us better restore the historical truth of different eras, but these precious cultural relics are also facing the danger of destruction just after excavation.
For cultural relics, in such a closed and stable environment as ancient tombs, it can often be preserved for a long time, but once the light is seen again, it will often see the light and die, the light will be blackened and changed, and the heavy will be directly decomposed into fragments, and the sunlight and oxygen that are not available to humans are the natural enemies of cultural relics preservation.
Deep buried in the underground of the tomb, there is no sunlight all year round, oxygen content is also very low, the air is inert gas, such an environment is conducive to the preservation of cultural relics, and once the tomb is excavated, cultural relics from the ground unearthed, the surrounding light, oxygen, humidity changes, will make the cultural relics rapidly corroded or even carbonized.
Among them, the cultural relics composed of inorganic substances can be preserved for a relatively long time, such as ceramics, jade and other materials are less affected, and the impact of excavation on cultural relics made of direct stone is even more minimal, and although metals will be corroded, precious metals such as gold are also very stable, and many thousands of years old gold is still brilliant.
Organic matter is much more difficult to preserve, such as silk, wood, paper, etc., after excavation is very fragile, once the environment has some slight changes, it will carbonize and blacken, or even directly into powder, smoke and dissipation.
As for the food for burial, it is the most difficult cultural relic to preserve, and the juicy ingredients of a thousand years ago are difficult to even wait until the day of excavation, and they are often decayed and deteriorated in ancient tombs.
As the premier precious tomb in the history of mainland archaeology, Mawangdui is famous for its diverse types and quantities of cultural relics, among which in addition to inorganic objects such as bronzes, there are countless organic substances such as silk fabrics, which also increases the difficulty of cultural relics protection.
Among the Mawangdui cultural relics, the rarest is that there are also a large number of food crops for burial, including cooked food cooked in the Han Dynasty.
The Han Dynasty was an important stage in the development of agriculture on the mainland, the working people had mastered mature farming techniques, cultivated a variety of rural crops, and the tables of the nobles of the Han Dynasty already had colorful ingredients.
Among the cultural relics unearthed from Mawangdui, there are grain crops such as rice, millet, wheat, barley, millet, sorghum, hemp, soybeans, red beans, etc., and a large number of vegetables and fruits, vegetables such as taro, ginger, bamboo shoots, lotus, diamond horn, winter sunflower seeds, mustard seeds, etc., melons and fruits include melons, dates, plums, pears, persimmons, oranges, oranges, loquat and so on;
Many meat products have also been unearthed, representing our splendid farming civilization.
In addition to these food raw materials, there is also a complete set of lacquer case food utensils, which completely restores the food culture of the Han Dynasty to us.
Lacquerware is the main vessel of the Han Dynasty aristocratic diet, exquisite workmanship and practicality, Mawangdui unearthed a complete set of lacquerware, consisting of meat soup, vegetables and fruits lacquer plate lacquer, and wine lacquer cups, and a pair of bamboo chopsticks, placed exactly the same as when preparing for dinner two thousand years ago.
And this set of lacquerware, heavy contains food from two thousand years ago, when the archaeologists carefully opened one of the lacquer, the contents surprised everyone.
Only to see that in this lacquer, there was a bowl of clear lotus soup, and the shape of the lotus slices in the soup was clearly visible, as if it had just been made.
Just when the archaeologists were dazzled by the bowl of lotus soup that had been preserved for two thousand years without decay, the lotus flakes immediately melted and disappeared because they came into contact with oxygen in the air, and within a few seconds, even the soup turned black.
Fortunately, the photographers present at the time were quick-eyed, and at the moment of opening the lid, they clicked and pressed the shutter, leaving precious influence information for this bowl of lotus soup.
Today, we no longer have the opportunity to see the wonder of the lotus soup two thousand years ago, fortunately, on the photos left behind, we can still see its true appearance, on the photos, and today's lotus tablets seem to tell the millennium past.
After the death of this precious lotus soup, the archaeologists who excavated the Mawangdui cultural relics were also more cautious and careful, and in the subsequent protection of organic cultural relics, they took pains to save them from the same fate as the lotus chip soup.
In the protection of a batch of paintings, archaeologists use thin bamboo sticks, slowly insert them from the bottom of the paintings, gently lift the paintings, and then use small sticks to roll rice paper, stuff them into the space that lifts the back of the paintings, and sticks the rice paper to the bottom of the paintings.
In this way, the silk woven painting is completely supported on rice paper, with a layer of protection at the bottom, and then wrapped in film on it, which can be transported to the museum for protection without destroying the texture fibers.
Mawangdui also unearthed a bamboo container for clothes, which contains 14 Han Dynasty clothes, most of which are quite intact and unspoiled.
But because this container has been soaked in the groundwater for more than two thousand years, the water content is quite high, the clothes are stacked together and immersed in the water, and if the clothes are directly spread out, it is easy to repeat the mistakes of the lotus soup to see the light death.
To this end, the experts also racked their brains, they specially prepared a room, first laid a large wooden board on the ground, and then spread a clean cloth on it, the clothes in the bamboo container, the whole piece on the cloth to dry, and when the moisture in it slowly evaporated, the clothes were rolled up with soft paper, and then slowly spread out together with the protective paper.
Because the whole process of spreading out is carried out in a closed and shaded environment, the Han Dynasty clothes that have not been sunburned in the sun have retained the color of two thousand years ago, and the grain and color on it are the same as new.
In order to protect this batch of clothes, a batch of Suzhou silk was specially transferred from the Palace Museum, made into a lining board under the clothes, and the wooden box for storing clothes was also tailored according to the size of each piece of clothing, using insect-proof camphor tree boards, and the box also contained a variety of anti-corrosion and moisture-proof drugs.
When displayed, a plastic film cover will be placed on the box of clothes, which can also protect the clothes of the Han Dynasty while not affecting the line of sight.
As for the large number of books found in the tomb, they are packed in helium-filled plastic bags so that they will not oxidize and break under the protection of inert gases, and then transported to the Palace Museum in Beijing for centralized storage.
In this way, the vast majority of cultural relics excavated from the Mawangdui tomb are carefully excavated and protected, completely preserved, and show us the Western Han Dynasty weathering of two thousand years ago in the museum, which also provides a first-hand basis for historians to study the history of the Han Dynasty.
The historical period of Mawangdui tombs coincided with the heyday of the "rule of Wenjing" in Chinese civilization, and it was also the first peak of the development of China's feudal history and culture, and the archaeological excavations of Mawangdui also showed us the politics, economy and science of this important historical period
The level of development of academia, military, culture, art and many other aspects.
bibliography:
"Which Cultural Relics Are Prone to "Seeing the Light and Die"", Science Grand View Garden, October 2021
"The Material Culture of the Western Han Dynasty from Mawangdui", Collector, November 2011
"Unveiling the Beginning and End of the Excavation of the Mawangdui Han Tomb", Wen Wei Po, October 24, 2014