Hangzhou appeared a rare Southern Song Dynasty tomb, archaeologists in the process of inspection had an unexpected discovery, suddenly broke the mouth and scolded the owner of the tomb not to face, then who is the owner of the tomb? What exactly is written on the epitaph that makes archaeologists lose control of their emotions? Now let's step into today's documentary and unravel the secrets of this ancient tomb.
During the Song Dynasty, due to the difference in geographical location and cultural customs, the Song Dynasty was divided into two countries, the Southern Song Dynasty and the Northern Song Dynasty. In the long years, although the Southern Song Dynasty was slightly better in terms of economy and culture, the Southern Song Dynasty suffered from the intrusion of the Yuan army for many years, and the people were deeply devastated by the war. At that time, the capital of the Southern Song Dynasty was located in Lin'an, which is located in Hangzhou, Zhejiang today, which led to many ancient tomb sites in the Southern Song Dynasty being distributed in the middle and lower reaches of the Yangtze River.
At that time, a local family in Hangzhou needed to be repaired because of a house problem, and an ancient tomb was found. Archaeologists rushed to the site to excavate immediately after receiving the assigned task, and after reading the epitaph, archaeologists could not help but scold their faces.
It all started in 2013, at the foot of a mountain in Hangzhou, Zhejiang Province, where a small village sits. Most of the houses here are "old" and have now been damaged to varying degrees. In order to continue to live in the house, the villagers thought of repairing their houses to avoid problems such as collapse while living.
But the old road at the foot of the mountain is relatively narrow, making the transportation of wood a problem. In order to solve the problem of timber transportation, the villagers chose to take a long detour to carry the timber, but what they did not expect was that this detour had an unexpected surprise. On the transport road, the villagers noticed a hole in the mountain.
The villagers had lived here for generations and had never seen the cave entrance before, so they were very curious, so the villagers decided to approach the cave entrance to see what was going on. When the villagers went to the mouth of the cave, it was dark inside, and they couldn't see anything, only some ancient green bricks at the entrance of the cave.
For the strange green bricks at the mouth of the cave, the villagers' hearts were muttering, and they did not dare to easily enter the cave to check it, so they decided to transport the timber back to the village first. One of the villagers who was more careful in his mind guessed whether the cave entrance was an ancient tomb, so he told the village chief about this matter, and the village chief went to the cave entrance for a while and also agreed with this idea.
The archaeological team then submitted an application to excavate the tomb, which was approved and officially put into the excavation work. Based on the soil quality found during the excavation, archaeologists speculate that this may be a tomb from the Yuan and Song dynasties. The staff quickly cleared the soil layer that had piled up above the tomb and found the altar buried under the soil layer.
The altar is very large, mainly paved with cobblestone, and even a ditch is set up for drainage. This situation is relatively rare in ancient tombs, so archaeologists are more shocked when they see it. At the same time, archaeologists also hope that more discoveries will follow.
When the staff finished cleaning the altar, the burial chamber of the ancient tomb was displayed in front of the experts. Archaeologists took a lot of effort to open the burial chamber, but the situation inside the burial chamber was unbelievable to the enthusiastic archaeologists. The three dangling caves are presented to archaeologists, and the precious cultural relics in the tomb are looted, leaving only The Coins of the Song Dynasty and the tombstones inscribed with epitaphs.
Through the study of the epitaph on the tombstone, archaeologists determined the identity of the owner of the tomb, who turned out to be the prefect of Zhenjiang during the Southern Song Dynasty, called Hong Qiwei. The contents of the epitaph detail the performance of hong qiwei in office, and it turned out that Hong qiwei actively resisted the Yuan army during his tenure and successfully prevented the Yuan army from crossing the Yangtze River.
The contents of the epitaph also hyped up Hong Qiwei's patriotic feelings, such as Hong Qiwei specially prepared a will before his death, and copied multiple copies of the will, and posted it in Zhenjiang City, saying that he would not fear death and swore to coexist and die with the Southern Song Dynasty. But things are far from simple, especially after archaeologists have consulted the relevant historical materials.
If an unsuspecting person sees such an epitaph, he will certainly be moved, but the person who found these materials is an experienced archaeologist. Experts have found different Hong Qiwei after reviewing other historical materials, and because of these historical materials, they can't help but scold: Hong Qiwei does not want to face. Why is that? Mainly because in other historical records, Hong Qiwei is not even a modern version of "traitor" as described in the epitaph.
According to relevant historical records, when facing the menacing Yuan army, Hong Qiwei not only did not lead the army to resist, but first packed up his belongings, and then abandoned the entire city. For some time after this, Hong Qiwei returned to his hometown with the wealth he had accumulated before, and lived without any guilt. It was not until 1294 AD that Hong Qiwei died.
As for this practice of Hong Qiwei, it is not excluded that there is a sense of self-deception, and it is simply naïve to want to change the truth of history by relying on an epitaph. Although this ancient tomb has not unearthed many precious cultural relics, the inscription records the Yuan and Song wars in detail, which can also be regarded as a cultural relic with historical and archaeological value.