Speaking of famous women in ancient times, Wu Zetian must be among the best, she is the only female emperor recognized by orthodox history in China's more than 2,000 years of feudal history, which shows how beautiful she is. In 624, a daughter was welcomed into the samurai family, Wu Zetian. The Wu family has always been a family of officials and eunuchs, and the samurai have also achieved fame, he is the founding hero of the Tang Dynasty, and he was also named the Duke of Yingguo, which shows that Wu Zetian's birth is prominent.
The little girl gradually grew up, and her more and more outstanding appearance made her famous far and wide, and after Li Shimin heard about it, he was curious and summoned her to meet. After meeting her, he saw that she was young and beautiful, so he left her around and was named a talented person. At Li Shimin's side, Wu Zetian has been discouraged, and she has been a talent for 12 years until Li Shimin's death. After Li Zhi ascended to the throne, he first took her back to the palace to be crowned Zhaoyi in disregard of ethics, and then staged the "deposed wang Liwu" incident, and Wu Zetian finally became the middle palace in 655 AD.
Wu Zetian was like a fish in Li Zhi's side, with favor, power and status, and when Li Zhi died in 683 AD, she completely grasped the power. In 690, Wu Zetian ascended the throne as emperor, and the world changed from "Li Tang" to "Wu Zhou", when she was already 67 years old. Although Wu Zetian's life is extremely beautiful, it is also controversial, from her raising her face head to killing women to seek the throne, but to tell the truth, these behaviors are common in the imperial family, and everyone criticizes her only because of her gender.
In fact, she made many achievements during her reign, politically cracking down on door valves, rectifying the rule of officials, appointing talents, and developing imperial examinations; economically, she actively developed agriculture, lightly dispensed with small gifts, and really surpassed most male emperors in her life. In 705, the empress's life came to an end, and after her death, the emperor was located in the Li family, and she was buried with her husband Li Zhi. The most surprising thing is that she erected a wordless monument, which some people say is too arrogant and feels that words cannot describe her achievements, and some people say that she is broad-minded, and the merits are not allowed to be commented on by subsequent people.
In addition to the wordless stele, there are 61 stone statues in front of her tomb, but these stone statues have no heads, and the Song, Yuan, Ming, and Qing dynasties have been insoluble for thousands of years, and they did not expect that in the end, they were inadvertently cracked by 2 old farmers.
So who are these 61 stone statues? Why is there no head? In 1974 these problems were solved by 2 old farmers. This year, 2 farmers in Xianyang went to the farmland to work as usual, during the period when hoeing the ground with a hoe, they suddenly dug up something hard, they all thought it was a big stone, so they continued to dig, who knew that after the big stone had no soil to cover it, they found that it was a stone human head.
Born in the ancient capital, they naturally associated with cultural relics, so immediately after the discovery of the archaeological experts, experts identified that this is a Tang Dynasty antiquities, and then they dug around, and sure enough, found many similar heads, and finally determined that these heads are related to the 61 headless stone statues in front of Wu Zetian's tomb. Experts have long studied where the heads of these stone statues went, and no one expected that the headless stone statues that had been incomprehensible for thousands of years were finally cracked by 2 farmers.
So what do these people have to do with Wu Zetian? It turns out that these people are Turkic, from the stone statue, they all have slender braids, the facial features are not similar to the Han, more exotic characteristics, more importantly, the back of the stone statues are engraved with identities, but some of them can not be seen clearly after a thousand years of wind and rain, can be identified are "Mujuhan King Stol", "Tocharo Prince Holding Karma Da Qian" and so on, from these can be seen, these 61 stone statues are actually 61 vassals of the Tang Dynasty, they appear in front of the tomb, more can show the empress's ability to calm down foreign troubles.
Wu Zetian's life, there are all merits, after a thousand years of circulation, her name is well known to everyone but mysterious, this may also be her original intention to erect a wordless monument, right?
References: Zizhi Tongjian, New Book of Tang