introduction
We should all have a certain understanding of the history of my Song Dynasty, and in 1127 AD, the Northern Song Dynasty was established after the fall of the Southern Song Dynasty, and then because the capital was too close to Jin, it was often harassed, and finally moved the capital to Lin'an, which is today's Hangzhou, when Lin'an was a very prosperous metropolis.
And we also know that most of the ancient tombs of the Song Dynasty were found in the middle and lower reaches of the Yangtze River on the mainland, and the burial methods are also very many, in addition to the very uncommon tombs such as vertical pit tombs, there are many rectangular brick tombs, and there will be a lot of porcelain, precious metal gold and silver and some very precious ceramic cultural relics in the tombs. In this article, I want to talk about an ancient tomb from the Southern Song Dynasty found in Hangzhou, and after the experts understood what was written on the epitaph, they directly scolded the owner of the tomb not to face, why is this?
01.
One day in 2013, in a small mountain village in Hangzhou, Zhejiang Province, several villagers were building their houses at the foot of a big mountain, but they suddenly found a dark hole with some cyan bricks at the entrance. The villagers found this situation very strange, although they were curious and did not act rashly.
Instead, they immediately chose to tell the village committee of their village about this matter, and after listening to them talk about this situation, the village committee doubted whether they had dug up an ancient tomb, so they immediately called the relevant departments and hoped that they could come to check it out. After hearing about this situation, the relevant departments in Hangzhou quickly found a lot of experts to let them rush here.
After they arrived at the scene, they found that this cave is backed by a mountain, and there is a river nearby, the geographical location can be said to be very good, in the words of the ancients, it is "feng shui treasure land", experts have also studied and investigated the site later to determine that this place should be a large tomb, and there are many villagers nearby who said that there was a legend that there was a great general buried here in the past, but which general is not clear.
02.
Experts also excavated the tomb after receiving instructions from their superiors, hoping that they would be able to excavate all the precious cultural relics inside in order to better protect them. The archaeological team dug all the way down the dark hole, and then they also found that the mound was actually built by hand, and concluded that the tomb was sealed with soil, and finally investigated that the mound was piled up with a lot of cooked soil.
And the color of each layer of soil can be clearly seen to have differences, this kind of mound in jiangnan this place is actually very rare, is the Song and Yuan ancient tombs only have the characteristics. After the archaeologists cleaned up the thick layer of soil piled on it, a very large altar appeared, and there were many cobblestones on it, and a special drainage ditch was built around it, which amazed many experts, and said that such a tomb was found here for the first time.
03.
However, after the experts opened the tomb, they found a very difficult thing to accept, the experts saw three robbery holes in the wall inside the tomb, and the valuable things in the tomb were all gone, but only a dozen Song Dynasty copper coins were found. But later experts found two more epitaphs from the tomb.
There are many words on this epitaph, and after interpreting these words, experts learned that the owner of this tomb should be a prefect named Hong Qiwei during the Southern Song Dynasty, and that this tomb is a joint tomb where he and his wife are buried together. In the records of many sources on the mainland, there are very few records of this person, and the discovery of this tomb and the study of epitaphs can be said to supplement the history of that time, so that we can have a more comprehensive understanding.
The record on this epitaph roughly means that in the late Southern Song Dynasty, Hong Qiwei, as the prefect of Zhenjiang, resisted the invasion of the Yuan army and prevented them from successfully crossing the Yangtze River to come here, and when he went to serve here, he also left a suicide note and copied many copies and pasted them in Lin'an City to show his patriotic feelings for coexistence and death with Zhenjiang.
epilogue
There are relevant records that the Song Dynasty lost the final battle with the Yuan army, but the prefect Ofe Hong Qiwei, who was guarding Zhenjiang at that time, took the lead in abandoning the people and quickly fled for his life, and on this epitaph Hong Qiwei explained his behavior, saying that he did not want to surrender and become a prisoner before choosing to flee. After the fall of the Southern Song Dynasty, Hong Qiwei also returned to his hometown and continued to live, and died in 1294.
Many experts shouted that they really did not want to face after learning about Hong Qiwei, but the discovery of his tomb was of very high value to the historical research of the mainland, especially many records in the epitaph, which further completed the appearance of the Song and Yuan wars and helped us solve some mysteries.