"Secretary Zhou, it's not good, the tomb at the mouth of the village has attracted thieves again!"
One day in the winter of 2004, villagers in Sanchahe Village, Jiuli Hui Nationality Township, Zhongxiang, Hubei Province, hurriedly shouted to Zhou Xinggui, the secretary of the village party committee, and Zhou Xinggui hurriedly got up and walked toward the cemetery.
This tomb is the famous tomb of King Yingjing, which has a history of 600 years, the owner of the tomb is Zhu Dong, the twenty-third son of Zhu Yuanzhang, the ming emperor, as the tomb of the Ming Dynasty royal family, many people think that there will be a lot of gold and silver jewelry inside, and this has attracted the patronage of some tomb robbers.
Although the villagers of Sanchahe Village have cooperated with the local police to protect the tomb from being excavated by tomb robbers, before that, the tomb of King Yingjing had been stolen seven times.
Fortunately, with the joint efforts of Zhou Xinggui and the police, the tomb robbery gang was caught by the police and reported to the whole network, but in the face of wealth, a group of people chose to take risks.
In the spring of 2005, the tomb of King Yingjing was excavated for the ninth time, and seeing that the tomb robbery was repeatedly prohibited, in order to protect the cultural relics in the tomb, the State Administration of Cultural Heritage decided to carry out rescue excavations of the tomb.
A burial chamber blocked by layers
As a royal tomb of the Ming Dynasty, the tomb of King YingJing has a considerable cemetery cemetery, so before the official excavation, the members of the Hubei Institute of Cultural Relics and Archaeology took the lead in spending three months to conduct a comprehensive geological survey of the overall structure of the cemetery.
Experts found that the tomb of King YingJing sits north to south, surrounded by mountains on three sides, the terrain is high in the north and low in the south, the tomb mouth is facing south, surrounded by trees, imposing, and the cemetery is symmetrically distributed in the central axis, and there is a considerable scale of the hall in front of the tomb door, and the overall structure is basically consistent with the historical records.
Excavation site
On November 21, 2005, after clarifying the outskirts of the tomb, an archaeological team composed of cultural relics departments of Hubei Province, Jingmen City and Zhongxiang City officially began excavation of the tomb of King Yingjing.
According to the survey of the periphery, in order to open the tomb door to enter the burial chamber, it is necessary to pass through the front hall of enjoyment, with the passage of time and the destruction of the past, the above-ground part of the hall has been basically destroyed, and now it has become flat.
On December 2, with the sound of firecrackers, archaeologists, led by the leader Yuan Wenqing, directly excavated the underground part of the hall, and they originally planned to clear the passage to the tomb gate within a week, but they encountered difficulties at the beginning of the operation.
When archaeologists dug down with a shovel, they found that it did not take long to dig the ground to appear solid rammed earth, and it was very difficult to dig up manually, but in order to reach the tomb door, they had to dig up, so more people were put in, and they dug for more than half a month before discovering the stone wall outside the tomb of King Yingjing.
After the archaeological team chiseled the stone wall, they were greeted by a huge tomb wall engraved with the lives of King Ying Jing and his princess Guo, which is consistent with the Ming historical records, thus proving that the tomb is indeed the tomb of King Ying Jing and his wife.
Immediately afterward, archaeologists carefully dismantled the epitaph wall, packed up the well-preserved epitaph and sent it to the institute for further study.
Carry the epitaph
After the tombstone wall was demolished, what was then displayed in front of everyone was three boulders, each of which weighed a ton, which was used to block the tomb door and prevent tomb robbers from stealing, but what made the experts feel strange was that the stone door in front of the ancient royal mausoleum door was a whole piece, why was it 3 pieces this time?
With this question, the archaeologist called on the nearby villagers to help, because it would take a lot of manpower to remove the three boulders.
Only two carefully selected logs were embedded in the gap between the boulder and the stone door, and with the roar of the crowd, the boulder was pushed to the ground, but this did not mean that archaeologists could directly enter the tomb door, and there was a layer of arch outside the gate.
Door wall
Archaeologists knew that the designs were designed to prevent theft, but they still did not dare to be careless, and began to carefully carve from the top of the door wall, and after more than an hour of hard work, a small gap was carved.
The reason why the door wall was not directly destroyed was to prevent the appearance of organs in the tomb, thus causing damage to archaeologists.
But just when the archaeologists were ready to see through the gap, a white gas suddenly gushed out of the tomb, and there was no slightest smell, and the archaeologists had also encountered this situation when excavating the tomb before, and they were obviously not afraid.
Extract the gas
They used professional tools to extract the white gas, then put the white gas into the test tube and sent it to the laboratory for examination, which made the archaeologists feel strange that the staff pumped the gas for several hours before the white gas came out of it.
An archaeologist looked through the gap and found that the tomb door was made of two wooden doors, with a gap in the middle and a one-foot-long iron lock on the door.
Therefore, after understanding the general structure of the tomb door, the archaeologists immediately cleaned up the door wall blocking the outside, and then the archaeologists looked inside along the crack of the door, but the next scene really made the archaeologists frightened...
A cascade of disappointments
Only to see the clouds in the burial chamber, archaeologists could not see the inside for a while, which made the experts who had always been bold and careful can not help but start a fear.
Although the excavation process was carried out in the presence of many villagers and the media, they still vaguely detected a hint of strangeness from the fog and had a creepy feeling.
However, this was only a momentary fear, and the mission and duty told them that they must excavate the tomb of King Yingjing as soon as possible, because it is very likely that the contents have been stolen by tomb robbers, and archaeologists must let the truth come out as soon as possible.
So they used professional tools to open the iron lock on the door, and then gently pushed the door open, but the next scene immediately turned them from fear to disappointment, because the front room of the tomb was empty.
"Is it true that the tomb robbers stole it?" The experts were immediately uneasy, but the excavations continued.
Experts found that the area of the front chamber was about 19 square meters, and after the influx of air, the fog in the room quickly dissipated, and the burial chamber gave people a very humid feeling, but the ground was dry.
Just when everyone was disappointed, an expert suddenly found that there were small nests in the wall on the east side of the front room, looking at it, almost hundreds of them, and he quickly went to check it out, but he did not find what it was for.
Immediately after, other experts also gathered around, another expert found that one of the small nests was actually a wooden figurine, everyone suddenly realized that the original, these small nests were used to place wooden figurines, but after a long historical change, most of the wooden figurines have been corroded.
Soon, experts noticed that there were several Qin water lines on the wall, which also showed that the tomb of King YingJing had been subjected to heavy water more than once, and the corrosion of the wooden figurines was also related to the flooding of water to a certain extent.
Thinking of this, the fear of experts before entering the door also disappeared, they speculated that the white gas that came out before and the phenomenon of clouds and mist in the tomb were just water vapor, and later the test results also proved that the unknown gas that was pumped into the test tube was indeed water vapor.
Since there was very little in the front room, the archaeologists quickly completed the investigation, but they did not rush to go inside, because before this, there was already a person who had entered the interior to work, and this person was the photographer Yu Le.
Originally, according to archaeological practice, in order to show the original appearance of the tomb to the public as much as possible, before each excavation, the photographer would go inside to take photos of each corner, which was also a manifestation of responsibility.
After ten minutes of shooting, the indoor structure of the tomb of King Ying Jing was also officially displayed in front of the world, and the tomb was divided into four parts: the front room, the middle room, the ear chamber and the back room.
In addition to the front room has been explored, through the video records, experts have also calculated the situation of several other parts, of which, the middle chamber is a long corridor, less than 15 square meters, on both sides of the middle room there is an ear chamber, the ear chamber area is also less than 15 square meters, the back room is relatively large, there are 34 square meters.
After recording the original materials and understanding the internal structure, the archaeologists immediately marched to the middle chamber, but the situation in the middle chamber also disappointed them, and there were no valuable artifacts in the narrow corridor except for a few hollow wooden boxes that had been corroded.
This makes archaeologists feel more and more that the tomb was stolen, after all, before the tomb of King Ying Jing, it was "patronized" by tomb robbers 9 times, and it was not clear which time the contents of the tomb were stolen.
Disappointed, archaeologists excavated the ear tombs on both sides, and the next situation was refreshing.
Archaeologists found that there are three remains on each side of the ear tomb, through the detection of the teeth on the remains, experts found that these 6 remains are underage girls, but that is all, experts after further excavation found that they are some burial of the beard, and this is not uncommon in the early Ming Dynasty royal tombs, The age of the life of King Ying Jing is a martyrdom system.
After excavating the front, middle and ear chambers, archaeologists seem to have little confidence in the next excavation, but as soon as they entered the final back chamber, they suddenly became excited...
Discover the treasures of the town hall
Upon arrival in the back chamber, the first location to attract the attention of archaeologists is on the east side of the back chamber, where a large number of exquisite funerary objects are placed in the niches.
According to the funeral rites of the Ming Dynasty royal family, the funerary products here are the favorites of King YingJing during his lifetime. Among them, the most valuable are the Crystal Mountain And the Agate Dragon Beast.
Crystal Shanzi is crystal clear throughout, the surface is very smooth, it is used as a pen holder by King Ying Jing before his death, because it resembles a small mountain, so it is named Crystal Shanzi.
The shape of the agate dragon beast is more unique, it is carved into one of the nine sons of the ancient dragon, the mocking wind, meaning to ward off evil and town house, and it is of course also a practical instrument in the hands of king YingJing, the scientific name is zhen, used to suppress the paper used for writing.
In addition, archaeologists also found a large number of study utensils in the niches, such as Duan Yan, She Yan, etc., which can prove that King Ying Jing should have been a literati when he was alive.
Unlike the large number of exquisite funerary items on the east side, the west side of the back room is relatively shabby, but the experts are very happy, because the pottery figurines unearthed from the west side can confirm that the policy of "funeral instruments, do not use gold and jade" promulgated by Zhu Yuanzhang after he took the throne has been well implemented.
This is also one of the major purposes of archaeology, that is, to confirm some of the policies and deeds recorded in the historical materials through excavated cultural relics, so as to better restore the social appearance of that era.
After the excavation on both sides, only two coffins were left in the middle, one was from King Yingjing and the other was from his princess Guo, and experts then found precious cultural relics such as crowns, pi ben, and yugui that could prove the noble status of king Yingjing from the two coffins, and at the same time, some exquisitely decorated personal ornaments were also found.
After more than a month of archaeological excavations, the cultural relics in the tomb of King Ying Jing were finally displayed in front of the world, it is worth celebrating that this king tomb was not successfully stolen by tomb thieves, archaeologists excavated more than 600 pieces of cultural relics from the inside, of which more than 100 are national cultural relics, which has to be said to be a huge harvest.
Of course, the most valuable of these cultural relics is the Four Love Pattern Bottle, which was unearthed on the back of the coffin of The Princess of Yingjing, and was identified by experts as a rare Yuan Qinghua.
Not only that, this yuanqinghua also draws four exquisite character story pictures, namely Wang Xizhi Ailan, Zhou Dunyi Ailian, Lin Kui Aimei, Tao Yuan Aiju, these four people are famous literati and scholars in the history of the mainland, and Lan, Lian, Mei, and Ju are also elegant representatives, so the value of this Yuanqinghua can be described as priceless.
In the end, the Four Love Pattern Bottle also deservedly became one of the treasures of the Hubei Provincial Museum, juxtaposed with the equally famous Yue Wang Gou Jian Sword, Zeng Hou Yi Chime Bell, and YunXian Human Skull Fossils.
In addition to allowing us to see these exquisite cultural relics, the smooth excavation of the tomb of King Yingjing is more important than the excavation of these cultural relics to provide a solid example for studying the living conditions of the imperial family in the early Ming Dynasty.