In Tongliao City, Inner Mongolia Autonomous Region, China, there is a Turki Mountain, which has a long history and is famous, and in 2003, a Liao Dynasty tomb was found in a quarry on Turki Mountain.
Because of its remote location, the discovery of this ancient tomb has also attracted the covetousness of a group of tomb robbers, and the local government has also had a thrilling process when protecting and excavating the ancient tomb.
When the tomb was finally opened by the national cultural relics conservator, what came into view was a blood-red coffin, and on the coffin lid was a golden phoenix, and the well-informed experts present had never seen such a gorgeous and beautiful coffin.
When the lid of the coffin was opened, it was a female corpse wearing a mysterious golden hoop on her head and covered in layers of clothing, and when the veil of the mysterious female corpse was unveiled, the vigilant experts immediately realized the danger.
What kind of secrets are hidden in this female corpse, and what makes the experts feel so dangerous? It all starts with the quarries of the Turki Mountains.
A mysterious tomb in a quarry
In the Tongliao region of Inner Mongolia, Turki Mountain is a famous mountain, and there are many myths and legends about Turki Mountain, and a Mongolian folk song named after Turki Mountain is widely sung.
The plains around Turki Mountain, with abundant water resources and a large amount of land suitable for farming, are a rare treasure in the Mongolian steppe, with beautiful scenery.
In modern times, the quarry industry in the Turki Mountains has developed in full swing because of the production of high-quality stones, and the originally calm hills have also become hot quarries.
What no one expected was that under the quarry of Turki Mountain, there was buried an ancient tomb of the Liao Dynasty that had lasted for thousands of years, and the discovery of this ancient tomb also attracted the covetousness of criminals.
In the summer of 2002, in the tunnel of the Turki Mountain quarry, when the workers used a bulldozer to work, they found a stone pile more than 3 meters wide, so many stones stacked together, although it is a little peculiar, but because these stones and other stones in the quarry look no different, the workers did not pay attention to it, still normal construction of quarrying.
It was not until more than half a year later, in March 2003, that everyone found that there was another dry in this stone pile, when picking in this stone pile, someone suddenly found that some of the stones were reddish, which was very different from the stones of Turki Mountain.
There were careful workers present, so they cut down a few pieces along the pale red stones, and found that the stones inside were neatly arranged, obviously artificial, and more specifically, the stones were glued with black clay in the middle of the stones, just like building houses, and some of the stones had marks written in black ink.
Such a discovery also made the workers in the tunnel talk a lot, and everyone speculated that some people even suspected that this was a gunpowder depot built at that time because the Japanese devils occupied Turki Mountain during the War of Resistance Against Japan.
The Turki Mountain quarry site is remote, surrounded by some outlaws, looking for ancient tombs and treasures everywhere, and the news of the mysterious stone pile found in the tunnel of the quarry has not yet had time to report to the higher government departments, and it has been heard by these lawbreakers.
The quarry soon came several groups of people, who sneaked around the perimeter and found that they had to go through the working area of the quarry to enter the tunnel, so they consulted with the mine manager and wanted to spend money to buy road money so that they could go inside to dig, and some even proposed to share it with the mine manager.
The mine director realized that he did not agree to the demands of these people, but immediately reported the situation to the Public Security Bureau and asked them to send someone to see.
After receiving the report call from the mine director, the Tongliao City Public Security Bureau immediately notified the staff of the Tongliao Museum and sent a police car to the Turki Mountain Quarry.
At that time, although it was already March, it was still a very cold season in Inner Mongolia, there were still snowflakes in the sky, and there was thin ice on the highway, but the police car speeding on the highway did not slow down at all, and the police and cultural relics protection personnel in the car were all fiery in their hearts, hoping to see the mysterious stone pile as soon as possible, which may contain amazing treasures.
When we arrived at the quarry, the mine director had been waiting for everyone for a long time, at this time the sky had darkened, and the snow was getting heavier and heavier, but everyone could not take care of resting, so the mine director took everyone to the scene to see it.
The quarry was on the mountain, and there was no lighting equipment such as street lamps along the way, and everyone held flashlights used by the workers to barely illuminate the mountain road under their feet, and walked towards the mountain with a deep foot and a shallow foot in the thick snow.
It was easy to walk to the tunnel, everyone's clothes had been soaked by rain and snow, and the shoes on their feet were all covered with mud, but at this time, everyone did not care about these, and seized the time to enter the tunnel and see the mysterious stone pile.
The stone pile had been protected by the workers at the quarry, and the staff of the Tongliao Museum rushed forward to investigate it with the simple tools they carried.
After preliminary investigation by professionals, this should be a tomb left over from ancient times, because on the east side of the tunnel, there is a clear soil filling imprint, which is the construction trace of the ancient tomb, although it has not been officially excavated, but archaeologists have determined from experience that this should be a Liao Dynasty tomb.
The staff of the Tongliao Museum came in a hurry, did not carry a leather ruler, and could not accurately measure the size of the tomb, but according to the visual survey of the scene, the entire tomb should be more than 30 meters long, and the depth of the tomb burial was about 10 meters, which was an ancient tomb of no small scale.
The red stone found by the quarrymen is the red sandstone strip of stone on the west wall of the tomb, which was excavated and exposed because of the construction of the tunnel, and the black glue left between the stone strips and the stone strips was also used to glue the tomb at that time.
Part of the stone wall at the courtyard of the burial chamber is exposed, like a pile of rocks, while only a small part of the north side of the west wall of the tomb remains with the stone wall, and most of the south side has been dug up by bulldozers, leaving only the backfill soil in the tomb passage.
The entire burial chamber is very complete, and except for the construction of the quarry, there are no traces of previous excavations in this area, and this discovery suddenly made the experts at the scene lift their spirits.
People in the archaeological community know that the tombs of the Liao Dynasty were stolen and excavated very seriously, and there has always been a saying that there are ten tombs and nine empty tombs in the Liao Tombs, although it is impossible to conclude at that time that this ancient tomb was not stolen and excavated in the early days, but the possibility of its complete preservation to this day is very large.
And the scale of this ancient tomb belongs to the medium-sized large, it should be a noble tomb of the Liao Dynasty, if it has not been stolen and excavated, the cultural relics buried inside should be very precious and have great archaeological value.
After everyone came out of the tunnel and returned to the shed sprinkler of the quarry, they immediately arranged follow-up work, and the cadres and policemen of the Tongliao City Public Security Bureau protected the entire tunnel with the cooperation of the workers in the mine.
Because the mine director said when he reported the situation that someone nearby had already come to investigate and wanted to bribe him to dig privately, the public security officers were also very vigilant, and they notified the police station in the nearby town to make them ready:
"Don't sleep tonight, have your weapons ready, be on call at any time, and go to the police as soon as there is a situation."
The staff of the museum rushed back to Tongliao overnight to report the scene to the superiors and organize protective excavations as soon as possible.
That night, the leaders of the Tongliao City Museum, who had listened to the report, decided to set up an excavation team and went to Turki Mountain the next day to carry out rescue clean-up and excavation, at this time, only three days had passed since the discovery of the red stones in the stone pile.
And on the second night of the excavation team stationed, there were people around the ancient tomb, the prepared protection personnel immediately moved, the person was frightened to run away, can only see the faint back, and the scene found the traces of excavation, if not the mine director report in time, the excavation team protected well, this Liao Dynasty tomb can not escape the fate of the stolen tomb thieves.
In this way, after a thrilling few days and nights, the Liao Dynasty tomb in Turki Mountain was quickly and effectively protected after its discovery, and the cultural relics buried in it were also handed over to the hands of the state and the people.
Danger lurks in the ornate coffin
At the beginning of the excavation work, the work was very hard, the excavation of the ancient tomb needed to first clean the tomb road backfill soil, the workload was very large, and the Mongolian plateau in March, the weather was cold and frozen, especially the Tongliao weather after the heavy snow, the cold wind was bone-chilling, and the progress of the project was slow.
The conditions of the quarry are also very simple, and at night, seven or eight archaeologists are crowded into a mantle of less than 10 square meters, and in order to guard against tomb robbers, they have to go to the site every hour to inspect the site, and they can't sleep at all.
In the harsh environment, the excavation work continued smoothly, and after about a month, the entire cemetery was cleared out, and all the backfill soil and rubble inside were removed.
At this time, what is exposed to everyone is a Yongdao, and at the end of the Yongdao is a huge stone door, and on the walls of the Yongdao, there are some mottled and indistinguishable frescoes, including some strange symbols that look like words.
According to archaeologists, these symbols should be ancient Khitan scripts, but what these words tell is still not deciphered.
After opening the stone door, I did not immediately see the burial chamber, but there was another wooden door blocking everyone, and on the wooden door, there was a rusty copper lock hanging.
Seeing this copper lock, but let the archaeologists put their minds at ease, the intact copper lock and wooden door, indicating that this Ancient Tomb of the Liao Dynasty has not been stolen and excavated, and the cultural relics inside should be completely preserved.
After opening the wooden door again, the tomb finally reappeared, only to see that in the center was a red coffin, and there was a gorgeous golden phoenix on the coffin, as if it had just stopped on the coffin from afar.
The archaeologists at the scene all held their breath, and in so many years of archaeological work, they had never seen such a beautiful colored wooden coffin painted.
In the whole burial chamber, in addition to this colored wooden coffin, there are not many other items, the entire tomb is less than 4 meters long and wide, and the height is only more than 3 meters, and there is not much extra space after the wooden coffin in the center is placed.
The simple tomb, the luxurious wooden coffin, everything seems very incongruous, especially in the entire tomb, in addition to the wooden coffin, not only is there no other superfluous funerary object, the entire burial chamber is also very roughly built.
The outside tomb road is not regular, and the stones used to build the tomb chamber are not the regular green bricks commonly used in the ancient tombs of the Liao Dynasty, but the irregular rocks, which have made archaeologists speculate that this burial chamber was hastily built for burial.
In the end, the eyes of archaeologists were focused on the blood-red painted wooden coffin in the middle of the tomb, which was 2.31 meters long, 1.3 meters wide and 1.05 meters high, with red as the main color, and contained the inner coffin and the coffin bed, which was extremely gorgeous and beautiful.
In such an unusual wooden coffin, who is the owner of the sleeping tomb? The attentive experts slowly pushed open the lid of the coffin, and what caught their eyes was a thousand-year-old female corpse.
This thousand-year-old female corpse was wrapped in layer after layer of clothing, and when she was cleaned up later, she found that she was buried with eleven layers of Chinese clothes.
At that time, the experts who were at the scene did not have time to take care of the clothes on the female corpse, and they were attracted by the various funeral ornaments in the coffin lid.
Bells hung around the painted wooden coffins, and the knees and feet of the female corpses in the coffins were also hung with brass bells, and in the funerary items, silver horns were also found, and so many bells and horns were related?
On the left foot of the tomb owner, there are also circles of unconventional ropes, and wrapping the rope is a punishment in ancient times, especially after experts identify, they think that this rope is likely to be a whip, but looking at the identity of the tomb owner, it is unlikely that he was buried with punishment.
Among the burial items of the tomb owner, there are also many gilded gold and silver plates with tassels, and on the shoulders of the tomb owner, a rare circular gold and silver plate with the pattern of the sun and moon was also found.
This gold medal has a three-legged wu pattern on it, symbolizing the "sun", while the silver medal has a jade rabbit and laurel tree pattern, symbolizing the "moon", and in the mural of the tomb, there is also a sun and moon pattern, which is far away from the sun and moon pattern on this circular gold and silver plate.
Finally, it was the tomb owner's peculiar gold headdress that helped the experts determine her profession.
The owner of the tomb wears a cotton hat on his head, and the cotton hat is covered with a cross beam gold ring hat, which is connected to the gold jaw support under the hat ring, which is very rare in ancient China, but there have been similar discoveries in the cultural relics excavated in the Middle East countries.
In Tomb No. 6 of the "Golden Hill" in Siberhan, Afghanistan, a headdress combining a gold headband and a gold jaw holder was unearthed, and the owner of the headdress was also a middle-aged woman who was a priest.
The Khitans who founded the Liao State were nomadic peoples, who had frequent exchanges with middle Eastern countries and were deeply influenced by the customs and culture of the Middle East, and from this same headdress, it is likely that the owner of the Tomb of The Liao Tomb on Mount Turki was also a cleric.
At that time, the Liao state referred to clergy as shamans, and special costumes such as bells and trumpets, ropes wrapped around their feet, and sun and moon motifs were also decorative elements in shamanism.
Combined with these analyses, archaeologists concluded that the mistress of the tomb, she was supposed to be a female shaman, and that to uncover her further identity, the body was examined for other discoveries.
The danger also came inadvertently, just as the experts unveiled the female corpse and planned to investigate further, an expert suddenly reminded everyone of the danger.
The experts at the scene have experienced hundreds of battles, seen countless ancient tombs, heard the danger of course know to evacuate quickly, so they all scattered from the side of the wooden coffin, first to a safe place to avoid, and then see whether to withdraw from the tomb, some people still think that it is not touching the organs in the tomb.
The expert who reminded everyone to evacuate quickly then explained to everyone, and everyone knew that there was a large amount of mercury in this ancient corpse.
Mercury, also known as mercury, was often used in ancient times to protect the corpses of dignitaries from decaying, and for the living, mercury was tantamount to poison.
The mercury content of the ancient corpse in this wooden coffin is far higher than that of ordinary corpses, and experts are worried that everyone has not noticed the highly toxic mercury, accidentally poisoned, and then rushed to remind everyone of the danger.
Finally, the experts prepared all the protective measures before resuming the investigation of the female corpse.
So much mercury in the female corpse, but also make people wonder whether she died of poisoning, the owner of the tomb should be buried at the age of about 30 to 35 years old, is already a full adult woman, but this tomb is a single tomb, not husband and wife burial, has the tomb owner not been married?
These doubts also bring layers of mysteries to the true identity of the hostess of the Liao Dynasty tomb on Turki Mountain.
It is still difficult to determine the true identity
The true identity of the owner of the ancient tomb on Mount Turki, the archaeological community has so far been divided into different opinions.
At the beginning, many archaeologists identified the owner of the tomb of Turki Mountain as princess Yelü Zhigu, who was the concubine princess of Liao Taizu Yelü Abaoji and Empress Shu Luping, with a noble status, and she was also a female shaman.
From the perspective of identity and occupation, Princess Jerugu is very compatible with the owner of the tomb, but there is still a huge doubt that cannot be solved, that is, the age of the tomb owner.
According to the "History of Liao", "the daughter of Liao Taizu, with an ancient name, was unsealed and died".
In other words, Princess Jericho died around the age of 20, which is contrary to the archaeologists' identification of the owner of the tomb as 30 to 35 years old.
Later, some historians speculated that the owner of this ancient tomb was Princess Yulu, the sister of Yelü Abaoji.
And it is speculated that Princess YuLu saw that she was married to the Liao state power minister Zhen Mulu, and Xiao Mulu later rebelled and committed suicide after failure, and Princess Yu Lu also chose to commit suicide by poisoning after her husband's defeat, which is also in line with the archaeological findings that the corpse contains a large amount of mercury and the tomb hastily built.
Such speculation seems reasonable, but because Princess Yu Lu only has a few words in the history of Liao, it cannot be fully verified, and can only be proved by more discoveries in the archaeological community in the future.
Although the identity of the owner of the tomb is still doubtful, the cultural relics excavated from the Liao Tomb on Mount Turki are properly stored in the museum, waiting for people to stop and watch.
In 2020, people who have visited these cultural relics nearby said that these cultural relics, delicate with roughness, and full of historical precipitation, are rare and good, which is very desirable.
Through the window, these excavated cultural relics are showing their own light, allowing people to feel the beauty brought by the baptism of time.
In the winter of 2021, the winter in Inner Mongolia drifted snow, and the snow covered the grassland, but the Liao Tomb of Mount Turki has been standing in place, waiting for experts to crack the secret.
Farewell to the old year, welcome the new year, accompanied by the sound of the Spring Festival Gala, the arrival of the new festival in 2022, near the Turki Mountain, a peaceful and quiet, and all this is a new beginning, but also a farewell to the old time.
bibliography:
"The Discovery, Protection and Excavation of the Liao Tomb on Mount Turki", People's Political Consultative Conference Daily, March 23, 2017, 05th edition
"Liao Dynasty Tombs in Turki Mountain, Tongliao City, Inner Mongolia", Archaeology, July 2004