Guide
The treasured Blackwater City, which is repeatedly depicted in literary and artistic works, is much more famous than the real Blackwater City. The fantasy novel "Ghost Blowing Lights" and the movie "Dragon Gate Flying Armor" both regard Blackwater City as the place where the core events occur. Those fictional swords and lights, strange powers, and legendary treasures make Blackwater City a symbol full of mystery, horror, and temptation.
01
Bad Luck Strikes the Cursed Lands
On March 19, 1908, the Russian explorer Kozlov set out from the camp lightly with four companions. Their destination is a mysterious site known locally as the "Black City".
Kozlov
The "Black City" is located in the hinterland of the endless Badain Jaran Desert, desolate and uninhabited. The so-called "locals", whose residences are often tens or even hundreds of kilometers away from the "Black City", are extremely scattered and belong to the Mongolian Turbat tribe. Kozlov's guide, Bada, was a Turgut. He was assigned by Turgut Belle to lead Kozlov and his party to the "Black City".
Kozlov's note reads: "The local inhabitants themselves have little interest in the silent ruins of the ancient ruins, let alone in archaeological excavations, or even in my proposal to pay a high price for everything excavated from Harrahout." I found that many people were obviously afraid to approach Harrahout, thinking that it was a dangerous place. ”
"Black City" is pronounced directly in Mongolian as "Halahot", "Hala" is black, and "Hot" is the city, meaning Black City. It also has a more mysterious name — the Cursed Land.
Ruins of Blackwater City
Led by Bada, Kozlov entered the mysterious "Harrahot". Kozlov and his companions, stunned by this huge site, immediately excavated and collected antiquities in the ruins of the ancient city. Kozlov could not suppress his surprise and excitement in the face of the treasures of the city, and he later recalled in his book: "All our expeditions and excavations were carried out with great care and care. Every artifact found in the formation or on the surface of the earth will arouse the common excitement of everyone. I dug a few times with a shovel and found a Buddha statue painted on canvas, a feeling of surprise that I will never forget. ”
In just a few days at the site of Harahot, the expedition obtained valuable items of vehicle load: books, letters, documents, iron coins, women's ornaments, Buddhist portraits, and so on. Large parcels of antiquities were then sent from Inner Mongolia, China, to Kulen in Russia and St. Petersburg further afield.
The expedition was short-lived, as Kozlov had to leave the Harrahot site temporarily because of water and food availability. After that, he returned here twice, repeating the process of excavation, discovery, and transportation.
Under the social conditions at that time, Kozlov almost unscrupulously transported the rare cultural relics here in batches, spanning up to 20 years. The "Cursed Land" became a treasure that Kozlov wantonly dug up. And China, the true owner of the treasure, is now in the midst of a century of turmoil and humiliation, and has no time to care or even realize this plunder of historical civilization.
02
40 camels took 9 days to empty the "brilliant stupa"
In May 1909, Kozlov received a notice from the Royal Russian Geographical Society that his discovery of the ruins of the ancient city far exceeded expectations, which were the remains of China's ancient Western Xia Dynasty. The Royal Russian Geographical Society demanded that he immediately abandon his expedition to Sichuan and return to Blackwater city for a larger "scientific expedition."
A large amount of literature
Naturally, Kozlov did not slack off, and he returned to Blackwater Again. By this time, Kozlov had seen Blackwater as "our own Harrahot." The scene inside the city made Kozlov, who had been haunted by the ruins, very pleased. In the more than a year since they left, "no one has come to visit our dear ancient city, and the ruins are still the same as we left, and even the superfluous artifacts we excavated and left behind from the ruins and garbage were not touched." ”
Kozlov's first excavations focused mainly on the middle of Blackwater, and this time on the western part of the ancient city. If the Russians were fortunate to have been fortunate in the first excavation of all kinds of exquisite artifacts, this discovery made Kozlov even more ecstatic.
On June 12, 1909, a stupa not far from the western city wall was excavated by Kozlov. The tower was later called the "Glorious Stupa", and it was indeed a treasure of "splendor".
According to Kozlov, the ground floor of the tower is about 13 square meters, a storage room, and it is surrounded by mud and wood Buddha statues. There are books in front of the Buddha statue, on the raised floor of the tower, around the platform surface, and there is a column in the center of the platform. The walls at the bottom of the tower are hung with statues of gods, the size of the statues is the same as that of real people, and these statues have colors when they were unearthed. On the central platform of the tower are also stacked hundreds of books, books and sutras, Buddhist paintings, large and small silk cloth envelopes...
Because of the large number of documents and materials found in Heishui City, another kind of Oriental scholarship after Dunhuang Studies was born in the 20th century, that is, Western Xia Studies. Among those precious scrolls and artifacts, a mysterious script that has disappeared from human history, the Xixia script, has been revived.
It took Kozlov and others 9 days to empty the relics in this "glorious stupa". All the books were transported to the camp in large canvas bags, sorted by the size, shape, or some sign of the folio, and even some were only half a volume, so chaotic and without any record of excavation that later scholars were unable to organize these precious documents for a long time.
According to Kozlov's archives, the number of documents excavated from the tower is about 24,000 volumes. It took him 40 camels to transport the documents out of the depths of the desert. Since it was impossible for the accompanying caravan to transport all the excavated documents and artifacts, Kozlov decided to hide some of the items, including a statue of the Great Buddha, in a secret place. He intended to dig them up and transport them away when he came to investigate again in the future.
03
The robber explorers hollowed out Blackwater City
In 1926, kozlov's third expedition to Blackwater was already during the Soviet period, and it was the last time in his life that he led a team on a mongolian and Tibetan expedition. Over the course of two months, experts conducted a systematic investigation of Blackwater City.
Like the previous two expeditions, they found fragments of books and manuscripts, various ornaments, pottery, and coins. During an expedition to one of the monasteries, they found some frescoes, and in the niches of the northern city walls, they also found a whole set of clay statues of Buddha heads.
A tantric Buddha statue
This time, the expedition drew a detailed plan of Blackwater City and a number of individual building plans. But kozlov regretted that he was never able to find the statue of the Great Buddha and other objects buried during his second expedition, because the dust storm and quicksand destroyed all the marks left at that time. They may still be buried there, covered in thick layers of sand, waiting to be discovered and studied by future generations.
When these predatory artifacts arrived in St. Petersburg, almost the whole world boiled over. After Kozlov, expeditions from other countries also came to Blackwater. In 1914, the explorer Stein led a British expedition expedition to the Ejin Oasis and entered the City of Blackwater. In 1923, the American expedition expedition conducted an expedition in Blackwater. From 1927 to 1928, Bergmann led a Swedish expedition to the city of Blackwater. These expeditions continued the work begun by Kozlov, who carried out archaeological excavations in the Ejina Delta and drew up the plan of Blackwater City, but they did not get the same rich results as Kozlov, because the Russian explorer had almost hollowed out Blackwater City through three pirate excavations.
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