The previous article said that Li Pinxian, the commander-in-chief of the group army, transferred 3 transport companies to Come to Shouchun, Anhui To dig up treasures, and only talked with netizens about the soldiers digging out the coffin in this place. What happened after seeing the coffin, what treasure was dug up? This article will talk about Li Pinxian's list of stolen treasures. What is puzzling is that He Xuan, the chief of staff who participated in the tomb robbery, pointed out that he wanted to take the coffin of the King of Chu by name, along with other treasures he had received, and sent them back to his hometown in Yiyang, Hunan. What happened to this coffin later, there is still no follow-up.
Pictured: The site of modern archaeological excavations of the Han Tomb, the picture shows the hanging coffin
⊙ Tomb of King Chu "Nine Rooms inside the Chu Dynasty"
After digging up the white paste mud, I finally saw the huge coffin of the King of Chu. This is the core of the burial chamber, which is the prototype of the later imperial mausoleum. Li Pinxian's officers and men were eye-opening, and everyone saw them for the first time. Deng Zhiyi's reminiscence article is written like this——
"Around the coffin, there were more than a hundred wooden strips about three feet long and two feet square. When it was first dug out, the wooden strips were all soft, and when I pressed my finger, there was a deep finger mark, and once the wind blew, it was quite hard, not a sharp hacksaw that did not move; not a sharp axe, nor could it be cut. The color of the wooden strips is chestnut. They are stacked about two meters high and arranged in cross squares of different sizes. The coffin is placed in a large square in the center of the wooden strip. ”
Pictured: Ancient high-grade burial method "Yellow Intestine Inscription" (Tomb of King Guangling of Yangzhou in the Western Han Dynasty)
Deng Zhiyi did not know that this square was actually a room of rafters, which was the unique burial utensils and burial style of the Chu royal family.
At that time, the funeral rites of the Chu Kingdom, the king's tomb should have a large sealed mound, and the tomb road was generally one to two, with multiple steps. The huge wooden rafters outside the coffin are covered layer by layer, with a length and width of more than ten meters, and there are nine independent spaces inside the coffin, the so-called "nine rooms inside the rafters". There will also be a large carriage and horse pit nearby, and real cars and real horses will be buried. In the early days, there were also living burials, and there were martyr pits.
The function of the "nine rooms in the rafters" is equivalent to that of a modern three-bedroom or four-bedroom and one-hall. Each room has a different function of use, which is used to place funerary objects of different categories and properties. The coffin where the body is placed is placed in the "large living room", which is the rafter room in the middle. In addition to the exquisite burial chamber, the burial items are also exquisite.
Pictured: Han Dynasty coffins excavated by archaeology (after cleaning)
In those years, when the king of Chu was buried, he would bury the heavy ceremonial vessels cast in bronze, generally there were nine pieces of shengding ("jiuding"), and some had sets of various bronze musical instruments, such as chimes, chimes, and duos, which were placed in one rafter room after another. This system was inherited by later generations, such as the recently opened coffin of the Tomb of the Western Han Dynasty (Marquis of Haixia) in Nanchang, Jiangxi, where the "Jiuding" was found in the main chamber.
The tomb of King Chu of Li Sangu confirms the existence of this funerary custom.
At that time, only from a rafter room, Li Pinxian's soldiers stole a pile of bronze doves, several large bronze bowls, large bronze scoops, and many strange and strange antiquities with unknown names, as well as many brightly colored red, red, green and green flowers. The bottom surface of the flower stone is pure white, and the stone is thin and firm.
Photo: Bronze Duo
Judging from what Deng Zhi saw, the burial goods were already rich enough. However, this tomb had been seriously excavated by the townspeople before, and what Deng Zhi saw was actually only the remnants of the disaster. It is conceivable how many treasures would have been unearthed if the tomb had not been stolen.
Li Pinxian's three transport company soldiers spent more than three months before and after to end the excavation activities of Li Sangudui and complete the "combat mission" issued by Li Pinxian.
⊙ coffin lid was not sealed with a cloud of doubt
Whose tomb is Li Sandu? As early as 1933 (the twenty-second year of the Republic of China), after the ancient pile was first excavated by the townspeople, the academic circles of the Republic of China at that time speculated that this was the tomb of the King of Chu. But which king of Chu it is, scholars have different views, some people think that it is the king of Chu Huai, and some people say that it is the king of Chu Kaolie.
Mr. Guo Moruo, a famous historian, archaeologist and former president of the Chinese Academy of Sciences, believes that it is the King of Chu You. Guo Moruo published papers such as "The Age of Chu Artifacts Unearthed in Shou County" in 1934 (the twenty-third year of the Republic of China), and put forward this view, and his views are now recognized by most scholars.
According to the tomb robbers such as Deng Zhiyi, later experts speculated that when King Chu You was buried, it was indeed the "Nine Chambers within the Chu You", and now the entire chamber of King Chu You has been restored. Just imagine, if Li Pinxian had not completely destroyed the original tomb, there would have been many new major archaeological discoveries in the tomb of King Chu You.
The coffin of King Chu You is also very exquisite. More than 20 years later, Deng Zhiyi still remembers it very clearly.
Picture: Modern archaeological coffin opening site (pry open)
The coffin of King Chu You, which is scarlet, is about 9 feet long, about 3 feet high, and about 3 feet wide, and is decorated with reliefs of dragons on and around the lid, and the color is bright and new when it was first excavated. But what is puzzling is that the coffin lid and the coffin body were not sealed with iron nails, and the soldiers easily removed the coffin lid at that time.
It is simply incredible that the coffin filled with buried treasures was unsealed! Why is this happening? Because the coffin lid is not sealed, the burial treasures in the coffin are easily taken out by tomb thieves or mischievous people. Could it be that the person responsible for the burial intends to keep a hand for his future treasure? Or is it due to the rust of the nails in the old age?
The four walls inside the coffin are snow white, bright as ever, and there is no mutation. Only a bunch of hair was found inside the coffin, where did king Chu You's bones go? Speculation has long since turned to ashes. The shape and pattern of the "dragon robe" worn on the body still exist, but they cannot be lifted, and they become powder when they are lifted by hand.
Picture: Modern archaeological coffin site (Northern Wei noble coffin)
After the coffin and all the buried treasures were taken out, it may be affected by the "golden well" in the imperial tomb, Deng Zhiyi felt that there might be something under the coffin, so he ordered the soldiers to dig down about a mile deep, until they dug into the raw soil layer, and felt that there would be no more treasures before letting the soldiers stop.
The coffin of King Chu You weighed three or four hundred pounds, and as soon as Deng Zhi felt that this was also a valuable thing, he asked the soldiers to carry the coffin out of the grave. This coffin is not easy to carry, you can imagine that it took a lot of effort at that time. Later, the coffin was transported back to the headquarters along with a large amount of rafters and burial treasures.
When the loot was divided, The chief of staff He Xuan pointed out that he wanted to take this coffin by name, along with other treasures he had received, escorted by Fu Dusheng and sent all back to his hometown in Yiyang, Hunan Province, whether this coffin was given to his old wife as a life material, or changed to his use, it was not clear - anyway, the coffin of the dead man was moved home, which is very rare in the history of tomb robbery, which can be described as strange.
⊙ list of treasures obtained by Li Pinxian
Li Pinxian stole a total of "more than 150 antiquities" from the tomb of King Chu You. Based on Deng Zhiyi's recollection, the author restored a "List of Treasure Digging Treasures in Li Xianpin Shouchun"——
Pictured: A bronze mound was unearthed from the tomb of King Chu You
There are more than 30 copper dotts, each weighing about 1.5 kg;
There are more than 70 pieces of flower stones, each about 8 inches long, about 3 inches wide, and about 1 inch and 5 minutes thick, like bricks;
A number of large copper bowls and large copper scoops (not less than 4);
20 to 30 strangely shaped antiquities;
3 copper dings, each weighing 100 to 150 kg, the feet are cast with relief dragon heads, and the surrounding areas of the ding are also cast with relief dragons (excavated in front of the coffin);
2 large copper lampstands, each weighing about 50 kg (excavated on both sides of the coffin);
1 sword, about 3 feet long, with a relief dragon on the hilt;
The emerald, about 1 foot in diameter, has split into two large pieces with a pattern carved on it.
It is worth noting that Deng Zhiyi believes that bronzes such as copper dings, copper duos, and lampstands all contain gold components. Deng Zhiyi's reason was that these items emitted a little starlight at night.
After all these treasures were transported back to Li Pinxian's headquarters, they carried out internal stolen goods. In the folk tomb robbery gang, the sharing of the loot is generally decided according to the status of each person, the role played and the size of the contribution, and the old general assembly of the general leader takes most of it. It is said that these things dug out of Li Sangu's pile should be distributed by Li Pinxian, but The chief of staff He Xuan is very clever and understands the "rules of the jianghu" and has taken the initiative to propose the proportion of stolen goods: as long as one-third, the rest will belong to Li Pinxian. Most of the heads were Li Pinxian's, and Li Pinxian naturally did not disagree, so there was no other plan to share the booty. And so everyone rejoiced.
Pictured: The tomb of King Chu You unearthed a bronze eagle with wings outstretched and grabbed a snake
After the tomb of King Chu You, Li Pinxian, who tasted the sweetness of tomb robbery, prepared to continue to excavate another large tomb near Zhujiaji, the tomb of King Zhuang of Chu (the tomb of King Zhuang of Chu is said to be in Jiangling County, Hubei Province, and some scholars have analyzed according to this that the tomb of the Chu State in Shou County may be the tomb of Zhuang Shi, the wife of King Xiang of Chu). However, because the Japanese army had already launched an attack on the area of Tianjia'an and Shangyao, which was more than sixty miles away from Shou County, the Thirty-first Army and the Forty-eighth Army under the eleventh Group Army were engaged in fire with them, and as the commander-in-chief of the group army, Li Pinxian had to temporarily abandon the tomb robbery plan.
Not long after, ShouXian fell, and the matter of digging up treasures was known to the Nanjing government, and Li Pinxian's ambition to rob the tomb had to be put away.