Rescue excavation, generally refers to the fact that due to infrastructure projects and other reasons, the site has to be cleaned up, that is, passive excavation, such as a tomb found somewhere, but has been "patronized" by tomb robbers, in order to protect it, experts must carry out rescue excavations on it.
The tomb of the prince of the rich and enemy country that I want to talk about today has already been "patronized" by tomb robbers, and the experts have rushed to rescue and excavate it, but they are surprised to find that the valuable treasure has not been taken away.
In April 2001, presided over by the Hubei Provincial Institute of Cultural Relics and Archaeology, a huge rescue excavation was launched, and everyone did not expect that this seemingly inconspicuous tomb had more than 3,400 pieces of precious jewelry and more than 1,400 pieces of gold, silver and jade lying quietly, and the wealth was second only to the Ming Dynasty Imperial Mausoleum, and he was only an early deceased prince of the Ming Dynasty.
After several days of cleaning by the staff, a tomb passage appeared in front of archaeologists, and the wall of the tomb was embedded with a stone stele that stated the identity of the tomb owner, and inside was Zhu Zhanyuan, the king of Liangzhuang, and his princess Wei.
Zhu Zhan'an, born in 1411 and died in 1441, was crowned King of Liang in 1424, died at the age of 30, he was the ninth son of Emperor Akihito Zhu Gaozi and the great-grandson of Ming Taizu Zhu Yuanzhang.
Seeing the identity of the tomb owner, the archaeologists were full of enthusiasm, but a huge problem suddenly appeared in front of their eyes - stagnant water, all of which was stagnant water, and later according to measurements, the water in the tomb was 3 meters deep, and the experts used it for nearly 10 days just to pump water. Generally speaking, the cemetery will have a drainage system, but because the tomb of King Liang Zhuang is a slope and there is no drainage system, the accumulated water will accumulate here for many years.
In fact, when pumping water, experts are very worried, is the cultural relics in such a deep water okay? After pumping the water, everyone continued to excavate, and the tomb of King Liangzhuang was finally fully presented in front of everyone, it was 4.3 meters wide, completely opposite to the mountain, the closed wall in front of it was 1 meter thick, as long as you open it, you can see all the secrets.
But what people did not expect is that the front room door only has the east door, the west door has disappeared, it is reasonable to say that the stone door should be completely closed, the inside with "tap stone" to block the stone door, experts curiously entered the tomb, found that the tomb top has a diameter of about 10 centimeters of the robbery hole, but this hole is too small, should not be able to enter the tomb, if the tomb robber digs a little more, I am afraid that the tomb of Liang Zhuang King will suffer.
When the experts entered the tomb, they were stunned by the scene in front of them - due to the impact of the water, various cultural relics were scattered in various corners, according to preliminary statistics, the tomb has a total of more than 5340 burial utensils, including gold, silver, jade and beaded gemstones more than 4800 pieces, more than 700 excavated gemstones, one of which is about 200 carats of sapphires, is currently the world's largest sapphire found.
The back room of the tomb is only 31 square meters, which is equivalent to each square meter is piled with a very dense collection of cultural relics, which is really breathtaking! The Tomb of King Liangzhuang is the highest level of the ming dynasty prince tomb that has been excavated in China, and the number and exquisite degree of burial items are second only to the Dingling Tombs in the Ming Tombs. It is no exaggeration to say that the value of the jewelry in this tomb alone is enough to buy the next island nation.
So why would a prince who died at the age of 30 have so many jewels? After consulting historical materials, the "Yingya Shengyan" records that Zheng He bought a large amount of jewelry when he went to the West, but what these jewels looked like has never been recorded and no one has seen. Therefore, the expert appraisal team of China University of Geosciences believes that the "four precious gemstones" such as rubies, sapphires, emeralds and golden emeralds in the tomb of King Liangzhuang are all from Southeast Asia, which is the jewelry brought back by Zheng He that year.
Among them, there is a gold ingot, which weighs 1.87 kilograms, and there is a clear inscription on it, which proves its identity, it is a gold ingot made of gold purchased by Zheng He when he went to the West, and it is the only cultural relics on the mainland that are currently related to Zheng He's western ocean! Its historical value far exceeds the value of the gold ingot itself.
People often have doubts about "rescue excavations", thinking that excavating ancient tombs everywhere is not a good thing. However, the author believes that the record of documentary historical materials is far from enough to see the past history, and through archaeological excavation of graves, we can intuitively see the identity status of the owner of the tomb, daily preferences, and even find the physical objects that can prove the documentary historical materials.
Experts do not excavate the mausoleum because "cultural relics are valuable", after all, the historical value of cultural relics is not something that money can buy, but this is only the author's personal opinion. Dear readers, do you think the rescue excavation is correct?
References: "Liangzhuang Wang Yuanzhi", "History of Ming"