Zhao Tingyin was a person from the Five Dynasties period. He assisted Ming Jun in founding Hou Shu and became a founding hero. He died in 950, 13 years after his death, and his courtesy name was "Chungmu".
At the end of 2011, in Qinglong Village, Shiling Town, Longquanyi District, Chengdu, people were surveying whether there were any historical sites in the area. A road to the outside world is about to be built, and people need to judge whether construction can be started here. Unexpectedly, they also really found a historical site, which was an ancient tomb left by Hou Shu.
Archaeologists immediately came here to carry out excavations. Five months later, they saw an ancient tomb with an area of more than 500 square meters. After that, the cultural relics and archaeology team began to go underground to explore the tomb. They walked down the steps, through the cemetery, to a tomb door. The tomb door is made of tall brick tiles and has many exquisite patterns, including clouds and painted lines.
Open the tomb door and inside is the burial chamber of the deceased. The main chamber is mainly used to house the coffin of the master, with a coffin in the middle; there are many kinds of funerary items in the ear chamber and the back room. At the door of the right ear chamber, there are two clay samurai figurines, only 1.4 meters high, and their hats have golden marks. On the left side of the ear chamber door are a chicken and a dog, which are also pottery. In addition, archaeologists have found more than 100 burial objects in the ear and back chambers, including more than 40 pieces of single-handed pot pottery.
On the inner wall of the burial chamber, archaeologists also found a one-meter-long epitaph wall, revealing to us the situation of the tomb owner. Originally, this tomb was the tomb of Zhao Tingyin. The 3,000-word epitaph on the inner wall details Zhao Tingyin's life, including his birth, death, and family status.
In addition, the epitaph provides us with important documentary materials for the study of the five generations of historical materials, and even fills the gaps in the historical records. In addition, Zhao Tingyin's epitaph is basically consistent with historical records, but the place of birth has undergone some changes. According to historical records, Zhao Tingyin's birth in Kaifeng, Henan, did not match the Gansu Tianshui mentioned in the epitaph, so it needed to be corrected.
However, Zhao Tingyin's tomb has also experienced the presence of tomb robbers, but it is relatively lucky. The first tomb robbery occurred in the Northern Song Dynasty, when tomb robbers entered and stole some of the burial items in the tomb. Since then, the tomb door of the burial chamber has collapsed, and it was not until the last archaeological excavation that anyone entered. As a result, many of the burial items in the tomb have been preserved.
In the Sichuan region, there are less than 10 tombs of the five generations with a definite date so far. The tomb of Zhao Tingyin excavated this time is the most complete and exquisitely preserved ancient tomb after the tomb of the Former Shu King and the tomb of Meng Zhixiang of later Shu, and is the third largest discovery of the five generations of tomb archaeology in Sichuan.