"Don't love Haojie, don't envy arrogance, and if you are born voluntarily, you are the same, and if you die, you are in the same cave." This sentence comes from Wang Shifu's "Records of the West Chamber" of the Yuan Dynasty, and the heroes and heroines of the "Records of the West Chamber", Zhang Junrui and Cui Yingying, are a pair of infatuated men and women who promise each other, and the sentence "Born is the same, dead is the same cave" shows their loyalty to love and the firmness of their feelings.
People often use this sentence to describe the love between husband and wife than Jinjian, sleeping together when they are alive, and burying them in one place after death, in order to meet underground and continue the past.
The ancient aristocracy highly admired this statement, so many joint burial tombs were built, which on the one hand showed the royal honor and on the other hand, showed the deep affection of the two. Deep underground in Inner Mongolia, there is also a "thousand-year-old princess" and her colt sleeping.
A reservoir was built, and a green brick knocked on the door of the thousand-year-old tomb
In the hot summer of 1985 in Inner Mongolia, people were building a reservoir in Qinglongshan Town, Naiman Banner, and the workers of the construction team were digging at the specified location with tools, digging and digging, when they suddenly heard a "clanging" sound, the workers' tools smashed on a green brick, and people with sharp eyes recognized that this green brick was not an ordinary brick, it should be a "tomb brick".
The crowd did not dare to continue digging, and the construction team reported the situation to the Naiman Flag Museum. Archaeologists from the museum went to the site to investigate and found that this was an ancient tomb of the Liao Dynasty.
After opening the tomb, people were surprised to find that this was the first well-preserved Liao Dynasty royal tomb in China. There are a total of 3227 burial items in the tomb, including many exquisitely crafted porcelain, including White Porcelain of the Liao Dynasty and white porcelain from the Ding kiln in Hebei Province, as well as some green glazed porcelain, and most of the other funerary items are made of rare materials owned by the nobility, such as gold and silver, jade, agate, amber and pearl.
At the same time, it was also found that this was a joint burial tomb, according to the "Epitaph of the Late Princess Chen Guo" that accompanied the tomb, it can be determined that the owner of the tomb is the Princess Yelü of the Chen Kingdom, and it is her horse and her uncle who are buried together.
The mysterious Princess Chen Guo married her uncle
According to historical records, Princess Chen Guo was the empress of Emperor Jingzong of Liao, and the granddaughter of the later Empress Xiao. The name of the princess is unknown, only the title of Jeroboam. The horse that accompanied the funeral was named Xiao Shaojie, who was more than ten years older than yelü.
According to the History of Liao, Xiao Shaojue was chosen as a donkey horse when the princess was 16 years old, and was only 35 years old when she died, and died in her prime, and her official position was only to the rank of lieutenant of the horse.
The two are not only husband and wife, but also have a layer of cousin and niece's kinship. The relationship between the two is placed in modern society, and it is absolutely impermissible to marry close relatives. However, in the Liao Dynasty and even in ancient times, for a long time, the phenomenon of close relatives marrying was common within the imperial family.
In the Liao Dynasty, royal marriage was more strict, and the royal family could only marry between the Yelü and Xiao clans, so as to ensure the purity of blood and stabilize the political rule of the family's surname.
After the death of yelü and his uncle, it is impossible to verify whether it is because of the deep love between the husband and wife or just to show the royal temperament, at least the two can be regarded as a good story of "death in the same cave".
A mysterious golden mask, a beating ritual that travels through thousands of years
In addition to the regular royal funerary products, the most important cultural relics unearthed is a golden mask, which can be called the "treasure of the town" of the Institute of Cultural Relics and Archaeology of the Inner Mongolia Autonomous Region.
In the known tombs of the Liao Dynasty nobles, people have long found similar metal masks and silver wire networks, which are mainly used to trap and fix the corpse and keep the body intact, so as to prevent the mortuary from being too long and causing the bones to scatter, which damages the intuitive feeling of future generations on the image of the owner of the tomb. Princess Chen Guo's golden mask and silver wire network are the most complete and highest-grade tombs in the Liao Dynasty.
The mask is made of pure gold, which is much more precious than the silver masks of other Liao Dynasty tombs, with a thickness of only 0.05 cm, a length of 20.5 cm and a width of 17.2 cm. The whole mask adopts the yè (yè) technique, and the craftsmen according to the appearance of Princess Chen Guo, only rely on their hands to pound the thin gold sheet into shape, not only to reproduce the appearance of the princess, because the princess was only 18 years old when she died, the craftsman also needs to show the princess's youth.
The entire mask presents a serene and dignified aristocratic princess with a rounded face, round eyes, a narrow nose bridge, and a slightly wider nose. There are also 33 small holes at the edge of the mask, which are used to attach a silver wire network to fix the face.
It is precisely because of the fixation of masks, networks and the superb skills of craftsmen that people can witness the image of a young and beautiful princess after a thousand years.
Similarly, the newly excavated gold masks and bronze sacred trees in Sanxingdui, Sichuan, also carry the wisdom and skills of the ancients. Through countless cultural relics and monuments, human beings sit on a time machine, through observing each delicate texture, through each piece of restored text, to see what kind of life and what anecdotes happened to our ancestors thousands of years away. Thanks to this wisdom, we can travel through various time and space, and glimpse the deeds of our ancestors in the long river of history.