On June 8, 1974, workers from the Beijing Geological and Topographic Survey Office conducted geological drilling in Dabaotai Village, Fengtai. Workers found a large amount of charcoal and wood debris under a tall sand mound.
Because the Mawangdui Han Tomb is already very famous, the workers suspected that it might be an ancient tomb, so they immediately reported to their superiors.
Soon, the Beijing Municipal Cultural Relics Department sent two staff members to the scene. They saw that it was a huge sand mound 8-9 meters high and covering about 15 acres, covered with wild grasses and sour date trees.
Geological workers found 50 cm thick wood, 40 cm charcoal and 20 cm of white paste mud at a depth of 6.5 meters above the surface.
Based on years of archaeological experience, the two comrades believe that under the sand dunes is likely to be an ancient tomb.
So why do workers drill here? Originally, Beijing Dongfanghong Petrochemical General Plant planned to use this tall sand dune to bury several oil storage tanks deep (in line with the "war readiness" requirements at that time), so it entrusted the geological department to do preliminary exploration, which found a thick layer of charcoal.
The secretary of the municipal party committee is in charge
After consultation, the relevant departments decided that the geological workers would make further supplementary explorations in order to further understand the situation under the sand dunes.
On July 3, 1974, the workers of the Geological Survey Began to make up for it. This time, they drilled a total of 13 holes of varying depths, and as a result, in addition to white paste mud and wood, a Han Dynasty five-baht coin and a piece of wood fragment 4 centimeters thick with red and black paint were found.
As soon as these two things were unearthed, the archaeological department basically determined that this was a large Western Han Dynasty wooden tomb, which was the first discovery in the Beijing area.
Excavation site
The news of the discovery of the Western Han tombs in Dabaotai quickly alarmed Wang Yeqiu, director of the State Administration of Cultural Heritage, Xia Nai, director of the Institute of Archaeology of the Chinese Academy of Sciences, and a group of experts such as Su Bingqi, Lu Zhaomeng, and Wang Shi'an.
After they went to the scene to investigate, they also unanimously determined that it should be a large wooden tomb of the Western Han Dynasty.
Director Wang Yeqiu quickly reported this situation to the municipal party committee and the municipal government, and explained to the secretary of the municipal party committee the great significance of the excavation.
Wu De, secretary of the Beijing Municipal Party Committee and director of the Revolutionary Committee, immediately instructed: "Do a good job in the excavation of the Dabaotai Han Tomb", and held relevant meetings to make coordination preparations before excavation.
On August 7, 1974, the "Beijing Dabaotai Ancient Tomb Excavation Office" was announced, with Huang Zuozhen, secretary of the Municipal Party Committee, as the director, and began to carry out various preparations before excavation, as follows:
Coordinate the participation of the engineering company of the 4561 unit of the Beijing garrison area in the excavation work;
Invite archaeologists from Guangzhou and Henan to Beijing to guide the excavation work;
Coordinate the preparation of relevant technical experts by the Chinese Academy of Medical Sciences (in case of excavation of ancient corpses, they can be disposed of in time);
Strive for 100,000 yuan of excavation fees from the Municipal Planning Commission to purchase various materials and transportation vehicles required;
Please prepare for shooting at Beijing Film Studio.
Discover the robbery hole
On August 19, 1974, excavations officially began.
Drilling was carried out before excavation, led by three drill masters from Anyang, Henan, all of whom were experienced explorers. One of the masters, who was a tomb robber in the 1930s, participated in the excavation of Simu Peng Dafangding.
However, after the founding of New China, they all joined the cultural protection front and began to work again.
Thanks to the meticulous preparations, the excavations went smoothly. On September 27, the location of the tomb entrance and the tomb passage was fully explored.
After preliminary excavations, archaeologists learned that the sand dune in Dabaotai was tomb sealing soil, and it was about 15 kilometers from the city center. The existing residual sealing soil is still 8 meters high, with a bottom diameter of 50 meters from east to west and 90 meters from north to south. Preliminary estimates indicate that there are about 36,000 cubic meters of earth.
These seals were later cleared in a month with the cooperation of mechanized equipment. Immediately after that, the work of cleaning the soil in the cemetery began.
But at this moment, a bad news came: the detective masters found that there was a clear disturbance in the soil layer while cleaning up the fill.
Photos of the scene
Further drilling, a 2.5-meter diameter robbery hole appeared in front of people.
From the fill in the cave, a gilded copper auxiliary head and 20 five-baht coins were cleared, and the back of the copper auxiliary head still had traces of decaying wood and linen wrapped around, which should be the remnants of the tomb robbery.
The appearance of the robbery cave indicates that the tomb is likely to have been stolen, and the onlookers are suddenly a little disappointed and disappointed.
But archaeologists know that excavations are not treasure hunting, and you can't just look at the artifacts in the tomb. Burial chamber structures, coffins and burial systems are all valuable scientific materials and the value of archaeological work.
Moreover, such a large tomb, tomb robbers are unlikely to steal clean, so the excavation work has not been relaxed because of the appearance of robbery holes.
Major discoveries
As the clean-up work continued, it was discovered that the tomb robbers had entered the cave and moved several strips of wood in the northwest corner of the burial chamber, leaving an iron knife here.
Further exploration revealed that the tomb robbers had also moved the siding of the inner and outer rafters on the north side to the west side, and had also chiseled a square hole in the corner of the burial chamber, leaving behind an iron chisel.
As the fill was cleared little by little, the archaeologists were surprised to see that most of the "strips" and flat standing wood in the tomb had traces of burning.
This suggests that the tomb was not only stolen, but also excavated and then burned, most likely to destroy evidence.
However, due to the lack of oxygen, the fire naturally extinguished after burning to a certain extent, so most of the wooden structures in the tomb survived, which led to a major subsequent discovery.
Not only was the burial chamber severely damaged, but the body of the owner of the tomb was no longer in the coffin, but was dragged outside the coffin, and the head and feet were placed on the bottom plate of the inner rafter, but the bones were not yet scattered.
A piece of residual rope was also found in the neck of the deceased, which should have been left by the tomb robbers when they dragged the body outward and searched for the burial items on the deceased's body.
This indicates that when the tomb robbers entered, the muscles of the corpse had not yet decayed (and could be dragged as a whole). According to this, it can be speculated that the time of the theft of this tomb is likely to be the war and chaos era at the end of the Western Han Dynasty.
Yellow intestines are asked
After the National Day holiday on October 4, 1974, archaeologists who had taken a short break returned to the excavation site and continued to devote themselves to intense work.
After another week of cleaning, the most spectacular part of the tomb room was finally presented to everyone, which is also the most culturally valuable part of the Dabaotai Han Tomb: a large number of wooden tomb walls.
Looking at the entire burial chamber, all four sides are built up with a kind of "strip wood", and the "strip wood" is all headed inward, and there is a wooden door on the south side of the tomb wall.
Although thousands of years have passed, these strips of wood are still hard as new, tan in color, and some of the wood surfaces can be seen with a layer of pale yellow resin oil, which emits the aroma of wood.
The staff also found a wooden stick in the pile of wood, and wrote a line of Han Li in ink color: Wu Ziyun in the tree. This should have been left by the merchants who transported the wood. This piece of wood with text is a very precious object.
The "strips" used to build the tomb wall are regular and straight, the surface has been polished, and cross-shaped ink lines can be seen on both sides of some large pieces of wood, which indicates that the Western Han carpentry has begun to use drawing tools such as ink buckets.
According to the staff's estimate, there are about 14,000 trees at the current height, or about 122 cubic meters. The largest strip of wood weighs 32 kilograms and is amazingly loaded with materials.
Archaeologists are also dazed by the four walls of tombs built on top of each other with wood, because such walls have never been seen in previous archaeological excavations.
The literature and the physical object are exactly the same
What exactly are these "wooden walls" in the tomb of Dabaotai Han? The mystery was finally revealed by a letter.
During the excavation, Mr. Yu Jie of the Beijing Cultural Relics Administration Office wrote a letter to another cultural relics worker, Wu Menglin, in which Mr. Yu Jie copied some records similar to this tomb in some ancient documents, and clearly stated that the wooden wall was likely to be the "yellow intestine inscription" mentioned in the literature.
Mr. Yu Jie graduated from the Department of History of Peking University in 1953, majoring in archaeology, and has been engaged in cultural relics and archaeology. He was familiar with the historical documents of Beijing, and the letter immediately opened the archaeologists.
Subsequently, everyone began to read a lot of literature, and sure enough, in the "Biography of Huo Guang in the Book of Han", such a record was found: after Huo Guang's death, the emperor gave him "Zi Palace, BenFang, and Yellow Intestine Inscription", which is the earliest appearance of the term "Yellow Intestine Inscription".
According to literature, "yellow intestine" is to describe the material and color, specifically referring to the yellow heart of cypress wood; "inscription" is to describe the form and structure of wood placement, specifically referring to the end of the wood inward.
After careful verification at the excavation site, it was found that no matter which direction the tomb wall was, the end of each "strip" was indeed inward, consistent with the literature.
So is the "strip wood" cypress wood? Archaeologists asked the Jiangxi Provincial Wood Industry Research Institute to identify the wood, and the answer was that these "strips" were not only cypress, but also cypress hearts.
So far, the physical objects and literature on the scene are highly matched.
After many checks, it has been confirmed that these tomb walls, which archaeologists call "strip wood", are the "yellow intestine inscriptions" in the literature. This conclusion made everyone very excited, because although it was recorded in the literature, it had never seen a physical object in thousands of years.
The Dabaotai Han Tomb reveals to people for the first time the true image of the "Yellow Intestine Inscription", which has important academic value.
Clean out the golden leopard bone
Excavations began on 8 October 1974 and proceeded to the stage of cleaning up the interior of the burial chamber. The News Film Studio also carried out archaeological photography and news recordings on site, leaving the necessary information.
Because the tomb has been stolen, there are not many artifacts unearthed like the Mawangdui Han Tomb. Even so, hundreds of funerary items were still sorted out during the cleanup, many of which were scattered fragments of artifacts, but some of which were invaluable artifacts.
Gilded bronze animal face paving
Directly south of the wooden wall of the Yellow Intestine Inscription in Tomb No. 1 of Dabaotai, there is a door, 3.6 meters wide and 3 meters high, on which is equipped with the gilded bronze animal face paving head shown in the picture, which is 24.5 centimeters high. The so-called "shop head" is actually a handle decorative piece on the door.
The tomb also unearthed such as gilded bronze horse leg remnants, pottery pieces, jade and so on. Although the tomb robbers stole the main funerary goods, it can still be seen from the cultural relics left in the tomb that the artifacts at the time of burial are very rich.
Of the artifacts unearthed, two are particularly special.
First, a buried animal bone was found, at the north end of the outer cloister on the east side. Identified by the Beijing Museum of Natural History, this is a juvenile male golden leopard, and the burial of leopards is rarely found in the Beijing area. There was also a leopard image in the tomb, which was a small copper leopard with a vivid shape.
The second is the excavation of 4 ivory chess pieces, shaped as a six-sided rectangle, exquisite carving, vivid image, not only exquisite carved artwork, but also may be the tomb owner's plaything. All these provide valuable physical materials for the study of the material culture of the Han Dynasty.
Because of the theft, the coffin cover of the owner of the tomb has been scattered, and the thick wall plates of the inner and outer rafters have been moved to the west side. After careful restoration and cleaning, it was finally confirmed that the tomb used two coffins and three coffins, a total of five weights, and a strict structure.
More than a hundred wooden planks were all spliced together by mortise and buckled, without a single iron nail.
The five-fold coffins all use the best wood, especially the middle coffin and the inner coffin are more exquisite, and they all use fine and regular nan wood, and the level of craftsmanship is very high. One of the largest of them weighed more than 500 kilograms, and the 10 sapper soldiers were very difficult to carry. Such a thick, tall and exquisite coffin has also amazed archaeologists.
In late October 1974, the staff found a large amount of braised earth and sporadic animal bones and lacquer pieces during a drilling in the north of the tomb. Subsequently, it was confirmed that a second stolen Han Dynasty tomb appeared, and a skeleton was found inside the tomb.
With approval, the first discovery of the tomb was officially designated as "Tomb No. 1" and the second tomb as "Tomb No. 2". Tomb No. 2 is the same as Tomb No. 1, but it is smaller and later.
After identification, the deceased in Tomb No. 1 was a male of about 40 years old, and Tomb No. 2 was a woman of about 25 years old. Experts believe that this is likely to be the early Western Han Dynasty "same grave and different collection", and the Dabaotai Han tomb is actually a husband and wife burial.
Tomb No. 1 and Tomb No. 2 both unearthed a large number of lacquerware, which were expensive during the Western Han Dynasty. Burying so many exquisite lacquerware is not an easy task even for the princes.
In the outer corridor of Tomb No. 1, the remains of three Zhulunhua hubs were also found. What is particularly precious is that these three cars are practical cars, rather than the usual mingqi cars, which provide very valuable information for the study of the Han Dynasty car system.
Although both burial chambers were stolen in the early years, more than 400 pieces of pottery, copper, iron, jade, agate, lacquerware, and silk fabrics were unearthed.
Who is the owner of the tomb
As the excavations progressed, everyone wondered: Who was the owner of the tomb?
From the large number of artifacts and specifications unearthed, people judged that the owner of the tomb should be a feudal king in the Beijing area during the Western Han Dynasty. However, no physical objects with a clear chronology and the identity of the owner of the tomb were found in the tomb, so it can only be inferred from the structure and artifacts of the tomb.
Among them, coins and bronze mirrors are important objects of the broken generation.
On a lacquerware unearthed in the tomb, it is engraved with the words "May 24, 2012"
The coins unearthed in the tomb are all five-baht coins, and according to the literature, the five-baht coins were minted in the "fifth year of the Yuan Hunt". Five baht coins appear in the tomb, indicating that the tomb date should be after the fifth year of the Yuan Hunt (118 BC).
The tomb also unearthed a square bronze mirror, according to the judgment of the copper mirror shape system, archaeologists believe that it should belong to the middle and late Western Han Dynasty.
The Western Han Dynasty in Beijing belonged to the State of Yan (Guangyang Kingdom), which was the seat of Jicheng, the capital of the Yan Dynasty, and the tombs of Dabaotai No. 1 and No. 2 were located in the territory of the Yan Kingdom, located in the southwest of Jicheng, from these circumstances, the tomb should be the tomb of the Western Han Dynasty Yan King (Guangyang King).
According to these clues, at first most people thought that this was the tomb of Liu Dan, the eldest son of Emperor Liu Che of the Han Dynasty. However, with the excavation of a large number of artifacts, another fengwang Liu Jian also entered people's sight.
There were eight Yan kings in the Western Han Dynasty, but only Liu Dan (reigned for 38 years) and Liu Dan's son Liu Jian (reigned for 29 years) were in line with the time of excavation. Due to the lack of information, the academic community has not yet reached a consensus, but it is generally believed that Liu Jian is more likely.
postscript:
After the excavation of the cemetery, the excavation team believes that the Dabaotai Han Tomb is the only tomb with the burial system of "yellow intestine inscription" that has been excavated in China, and it should be protected on the spot, and it would be better if a thematic museum could be built.
Wang Yeqiu, director of the State Administration of Cultural Heritage, also believes that it should be retained, at least a showroom, "which can reflect the glorious history and culture of the mainland and can also be used as a place for foreign guests to visit." ”
In November 1979, the Beijing Municipal People's Government approved the establishment of the Dabaotai Western Han Tomb Museum in Beijing, and on December 1, 1983, the museum was officially opened to the public. (End of full text)