As we all know, the State of Yue was a princely state located in the southeast of the mainland during the Xia Shang, Western Zhou and Spring and Autumn Warring States periods of China, and its ancestors were the sons of Shao Kang, the monarch of the Xia Dynasty, and were one of the direct descendants of the ancestor of Huaxia, Dayu. The State of Yue was mainly centered on the tomb of King Yu of Shaoxing, and in the late Spring and Autumn Period, the ruler of the State of Yue, Yun Chang, often clashed with the State of Wu and attacked each other. After Yun Chang's death, Gou Jian succeeded him as the king of the State of Yue, and he destroyed the State of Wu in 473 BC. During the period of great power, the sphere of influence of the Yue State once reached Qilu in the north, the East China Sea in the east, and the Anhui Huai and Ganpo in the west, dominating the southeast. What I want to tell you today is that it is located in the Tomb of King Yinshan Yue in Shaoxing, Zhejiang Province.
In the south of Mushilan Village, Shaoxingting Town, Zhejiang Province, there is a special hill, about 300 meters long from east to west, about 24 meters high, because its plane is square, and the inside is towering like a seal, commonly known as "Yin Mountain". In the 1990s, the Zhejiang Institute of Archaeology discovered a large tomb on The Indian Mountain, and after excavation and exploration, it was confirmed that the scale of this large tomb was very large. Later, after submitting to the State Administration of Cultural Heritage for approval, the Zhejiang Provincial Archaeological Institute launched an archaeological excavation of the tomb. According to archaeologists, this large tomb is a vertical pit tomb composed of tomb passages and tomb pits in the shape of "A", the tomb pit is rectangular, the pit mouth is about 46 meters long, about 14 meters wide, and about 12.4 meters deep. A large tomb of this size can only be used by princes and emperors, and according to carbon fourteen, the age of this large tomb is about 2500 years ago, which belongs to the Warring States period.
According to the study of the entire royal tomb, the burial chambers are separated by steps, and the interior of the tomb is constructed using a huge rectangular wood, and the surrounding areas of each wooden fir are painted. The bottom surface is horizontally paved with rectangular wood, and the two sides of the bottom surface are supported obliquely by rectangular wood, and the shape is a triangular wooden rafter, the wood of the wooden rafter, with a diameter of more than 80 centimeters, the top is covered with hardwood planks, and the size of the burial chamber is huge, more than 30 meters long, nearly 5 meters wide at the bottom, and more than 4 meters in height. The middle chamber of the tomb is also paved with a layer of weaving, and a large wooden coffin is parked in the center, the wooden coffin is 6.10 meters long, 1.10 meters wide, and the inner height is 0.40 meters, which is carved out of single wood, (a wooden coffin with a whole section of the tree body hollowed out into two pieces) The inside and outside of the coffin and the rectangular wood inside the tomb are painted on three sides, and the paint surface in the local area is still like a mirror, which is breathtaking.
The tombs of the Yinshan Yue kings are not only grand in scale, but also very scientific and exquisite in the anti-corrosion measures of filling, the first bag of the tomb has about 140 layers of bark, more than 20 centimeters of hard bark is filled with a 1 meter thick layer of charcoal, and then the entire tomb is filled with a large amount of green plaster mud. According to archaeologists, the bottom of the burial chamber pit is also covered with a layer of 1.65 meters thick charcoal, plus layers of protective "barriers" such as sealing mounds, which has made this one-wood giant coffin basically preserved intact for 2500 years. Some experts assert that their age is more than 1,000 years, and historical records record that there were large areas of dense primary forest in the Shaoxing area more than 2,000 years ago.
According to statistics, the tomb unearthed a total of more than 40 cultural relics, including jade, bronze, lacquerware, stone tools and jade swords, etc., and whether the remains and funerary items of Yue Wang Yunchang were looted by successive tomb robbers or for another reason are still intriguing. The Yinshan Tomb is rare in the world in terms of its architectural scale, reasonable structure, unique shape, grandeur and well-preserved. The rescue excavation of it has reproduced the splendid ancient Yue culture of more than 2500 years ago. Domestic cultural relics authorities believe that the cultural relics value of the Yinshanyue King's Mausoleum is completely comparable to that of the Qin King's Mausoleum. Therefore, there is a reputation of "Qin Palace in the north and Yinshan Mountain in the south", and these eight words fully summarize the high cultural relics value of the Yinshan Yue King Mausoleum.