preface
One night at the end of December 1979, with a loud "boom", an ancient tomb near Youjiaxiang Village in Yuekou Township, Nancheng County, Jiangxi Province, was blown open by several tomb robbers, and under the cover of dark night, two black shadows appeared.
"Brother, really... Can it really work? One of them didn't know if it was freezing or if he was scared, and asked hesitantly.
"Believe me, we will be able to get rich this time!" The man who spoke was Zhu Yingfeng, a fertilizer factory worker who had stumbled upon the entrance to the tomb while digging a drainage ditch.
In the 1970s, people's awareness of cultural relics protection was also very weak, and there was no precautionary measures for some tombs.
It is in this particular environment that many tomb robbers have been given the opportunity to take advantage of, and Zhu Yingfeng is one of them. When he found the entrance to the tomb, the thief's heart suddenly rose, so he pulled a companion and wanted to sneak into the tomb to steal some antique relics and sell them for money when night fell.
At this point, the joint burial tomb of Zhu Yiyi, a descendant of Zhu Yuanzhang, and his concubine Li Yinggu and the step-concubine Sun was announced. Jiangxi cultural relics workers also began to excavate the joint tomb of the Ming Dynasty prince and princess.
01 The tomb of the ming dynasty king was excavated, and the concubine was shocked to see the "road guide" in the underworld
In 1980, the tomb of this Ming Dynasty king was located in Nancheng County, Jiangxi Province, and archaeologists arrived at the scene and confirmed according to the epitaph found in the tomb that the tomb was found to be a Ming Dynasty royal family!
The owner of the tomb was the ninth grandson of Zhu Yuanzhang, the ming emperor of Jiangxi, Zhu Yixuan, and his concubines Li and his stepfather Sun.
Since Zhu Yiyi's coffin had been opened, archaeologists arrived and immediately cleaned up Zhu Yiyi's coffin, and in mid-August, began to dispose of the coffins of Yuan Concubine Li Yinggu and Stepfather Sun.
When the cultural relics team members opened the lid of the coffin of Yuan Fei Li Yinggu, a pungent smell greeted them. Because of its age, the body of Concubine Li Yinggu had decayed to the ground.
Due to the serious decay of the bones, we do not know the appearance of this Ming Dynasty princess.
However, judging from the way Li's head and limbs are wrapped in white cloth strips, it is like a mummy, which is different from the way ordinary people enter the burial.
Outside Li's body, there were also seven robes wrapped, the innermost of which was covered with a cover. As a concubine of Zhu Yiwei, this concubine must have been very favored before she died, otherwise she would not have been buried with Wang Ye.
It is also true that in Li's coffin, archaeologists found many valuable funerary items, including gold, silver, copper, porcelain, jade pendants, phoenix crowns and other precious ornaments.
But just above the chest of Lee's body, a small cloth bag caught the attention of archaeologists. This small cloth bag has been preserved for hundreds of years.
Moreover, this small cloth bag is not particularly gorgeous, compared with the variety of precious burials around Li's side, it seems a bit out of place.
What is this little cloth bag? What valuable items are inside? Can it be placed in an important position directly above Lee's chest? Its appearance surprised archaeologists and paid special attention to it.
In order to solve the mystery in the heart, archaeologists carefully opened the small cloth bag that had been preserved for hundreds of years, and it did not contain any rare treasures, but a cotton paper guide and some paper money ashes.
This road guide is installed in a seal with a burr edge, the cover is almost rotten, but from the outside of the cover is still faintly visible a "seal" word, which is also stamped with a red seal from the Ming Dynasty.
In addition, there are three Taoist runes printed in the lower right gap of the road guide, and there is also an image of Taishang Laojun in the upper left corner.
Under the measurement of archaeologists, it was learned that this road guide was 0.69 meters high and 0.55 meters wide, and under the protection of the cloth bag, the road guide not only did not corrode, but also did not even have any yellowing marks on the surface.
As can be seen from the handwriting on the road guide, it is printed in a wood engraving, which details Various information such as Li's name, date of birth, and place of birth.
02 What exactly is the ancient "road guide"?
What is a road guide? Why did it appear on the ming dynasty princess? The so-called road guide is actually equivalent to the pass of the deceased to Hades.
During the Ming Dynasty, there was such a regulation: all personnel who want to go far away, hundreds of miles away from their hometown, must go to the relevant management departments to open letters of introduction, passes and other similar official documents, which are called "road guides", and "road guides" are actually proof of leaving their hometowns.
If they did not carry the "road guide" or did not conform to the road guide, they were punished according to law, which may have been a method of managing the population in the Ming Dynasty at that time.
There is another origin theory of Lu Yin, it is said that during the reign of Emperor Taizong of Tang, Wei Zheng beheaded the old dragon of Jinghe in a dream, which implicated Tang Taizong Li Shimin, who was taken to the King of Yanluo to be punished, and when the King of Yanluo learned that Li Shimin was a good emperor who was diligent and loved the people, he decided to let Li Shimin return to Yang.
The Yin Tianzi of the Yin Cao Prefecture took this opportunity to entrust yang Tianzi to bring the ghost country passport "Road Guide" back to the Yang Room and issue it to the good people in the Yang Room, so that even after they died, they could enter the capital of the Ghost Country with the road guide they obtained, the capital of the Ghost Country, and those who arrived in the Capital could be protected from the bullying and punishment of the ghosts of hell. Therefore, after the Tang Dynasty, the road guide was handed down.
The road guide on the chest of the Ming Dynasty princess Li Shi, according to the customs of the time, was probably a pass to the capital that her family had specially requested for her at that time.
From this legend, many people feel that this guide does not have much value, but for archaeologists, any cultural relic has its historical value.
Although the road guide on Li's chest is small, it is worth more than those gold and silver jewels, because some of the information on it is the physical proof of the funeral customs of the Ming Dynasty, and it is also through this basically well-preserved road guide that the world understands the funeral customs of a hundred years ago.
03 The tomb treasures were all dug up and the treasures were dazzling
In addition to these funerary customs are worth studying, the tomb of the king of the clan is also very exquisite, after archaeologists verify, this tomb is made of green bricks by a circle of three chambers, the plane is a horizontal rectangle, the direction of the tomb is southwest-facing, inside with two flat straight brick walls, the entire burial chamber is divided into left, middle and right three rooms.
Inside the three burial chambers, the one in the middle is the coffin of Zhu Yihua, the king of Yixuan, the tomb on the left is his princess Li, and the one on the right is his stepfather Sun.
In the joint tomb of this Ming Dynasty prince and the two princesses, many precious and exquisite burial items were also excavated. According to statistics, in the tomb of these three people, a total of more than 450 pieces of gold, silver, copper, porcelain and crown clothes have been excavated.
When Zhu Yingfeng and others first blew up the tomb, the first thing to open was the coffin of this prince, so after the archaeological team arrived at the ancient tomb, they immediately excavated and processed the tomb of Zhu Yilu, who was the first to be exposed.
According to Zhu Yingfeng and others, after the entrance to the tomb was blown open at that time, the first thing I saw was a stone chamber tomb separated by three, all made of green bricks. From the faint light, Zhu Yingfeng and the others saw that in the center of each burial chamber was a large coffin of Nanmu.
Cold burial chambers, dim lights, big red coffins! Everything in front of me looks very strange...
At this moment, seeing the antiques that are close at hand, Zhu Yingfeng and others can't be afraid, the purpose of the tomb robbery is to find treasure, compared with the three Nanmu coffins in front of him, he found the largest one in the middle, thinking that there must be more and more precious antiques hidden in this large coffin.
Therefore, the eyeballs turned, and his companions immediately ran to the largest coffin, regardless of three seven twenty-one, first pried open and then said.
With the assistance of his companions, he quickly pried the lid of the big red coffin loose, and the two pushed the lid of the coffin open with great effort.
A smell filled the air, and at this moment, Zhu Yingfeng and his companions looked into the coffin, even though the two were also bold people, they were also frightened by the scene inside the coffin.
I saw that the body of the tomb owner, Zhu Yilu, was well preserved, dressed in exquisite dragon robes, with a jade belt tied around his waist, rosary beads hanging from his neck, and bright yellow high boots on his feet. The body is also lined up with money and silver money to form the Shape of the Big Dipper Constellation.
Since this tomb has never been stolen and excavated, it is very well preserved, and the body of the owner of the tomb has not decayed due to the passage of time, but has become a dry corpse, and with the naked eye, his facial features can still be clearly distinguished, and his hair is clearly visible!
Due to the perennial closed state in the tomb, it was unusually cold and humid, Zhu Yingfeng and the two did not have much cultural knowledge, nor did they understand history, nor had they seen an incorruptible ancient corpse, especially wearing a dragon robe so majestic!
Such a majestic momentum, as well as a hundred-year-old incorruptible corpse, made Zhu Yingfeng and his companions frightened and urinated, and they couldn't care less about carefully looking for treasures, so they took a few cultural relics and ran away.
Later, when the archaeological team entered this ancient tomb, they went straight to the tomb that had been opened, and after verification, it was confirmed that the male corpse in the dragon robe was Zhu Yilu, the king of Yixuan.
In ancient times, in order to make the coffin last longer, the ancients would add some glutinous rice to the soil when building the coffin, which could make the earthen coffin stronger than the cement coffin.
Zhu Yifeng's coffin lid had already been damaged by Zhu Yingfeng and others, but fortunately, they did not destroy the interior because they were afraid, so Zhu Yifeng's burial chamber was still well preserved.
Next, after excavation, archaeologists found more than 50 pieces of gold, silver and jade and other funerary items in the coffin of this Yixuan King, mainly including silk clothes, crowns, porcelain, jade, gold, silver, copper coins, etc.
One of the blue and white porcelain plates surprised the archaeologists at the time, because this blue and white porcelain can be called the best in porcelain.
However, the porcelain plate excavated in Zhu Yimin's tomb seems to have cracks in the edge of the mouth, and there are traces of re-gluing and glazing before being put into the kiln for baking.
But this does not affect the archaeologists' love for this blue and white porcelain, although there are cracks, but also let the world witness the Ming Dynasty era blue and white porcelain sticking technique, it is really rare.
When taking stock of the burial items of the two princesses, the number was somewhat unexpected, and there were 150 burial items in the coffin of the Ming Dynasty prince's Yuan Concubine Li, several times more than the burial items of the prince, including various gem-encrusted Zhu Chao.
The most eye-catching is a phoenix crown, on which is engraved the inscription "Silver Bureau Jiajing made gold in August 26 and 7 coins and five cents".
This magnificent phoenix crown is decorated with 9 kingfishers, wrapped in silver wire, kingfisher mouth bead drops, crown shape is exquisite and beautiful, golden light flashes, beads and feathers shine, gorgeous and abnormal.
Another step-concubine of the prince, Sun Shi, had as many as 248 burial items in the coffin. Jewelry mainly includes all kinds of gold hairpins, plutonium, flower tin and jade pendants.
Among them are the precious jewelry such as the golden phoenix hairpin of the bead, the golden hairpin of the Guanyin, the golden hairpin of the cloud head phoenix, the gold mask of the jade inlaid gemstone, the chrysanthemum golden hairpin, the golden hook and jade pendant, etc., and from these ornaments, it can also be seen that the princess's original scenery was infinite.
In the joint burial tomb of Zhu Yimin, the King of Yixuan, and his concubine Li and The Stepfather Sun, archaeologists have also gained a lot, and the rare and exotic treasures inside are eye-opening! From the excavation of this ancient tomb, the world also witnessed the luxury of the Ming Dynasty royal family a hundred years ago.
04 Grave robbers will eventually be punished by the law
It is said that Zhu Yingfeng, who first entered this tomb, saw that this Tomb of the Ming Dynasty Imperial Family actually hid so many rare treasures, and his intestines were all remorseful, and he secretly regretted that he had not stolen more valuable cultural relics.
Therefore, the thief's heart is not dead, he has been wandering around the archaeological team, trying to find an opportunity to sneak into the tomb again to steal some more valuable treasures, but he has not found the opportunity. Later, when he learned that the archaeological team needed help, he entered the archaeological team as a helper in the name of a whistleblower.
When he helped clean up the relics of the tomb, he quietly put his favorite antiquities into his pants, ready to sneak out and sell them.
However, his suspicious behavior made the members of the archaeological team see something strange, and immediately sent someone to search for him, and sure enough, he found the jewelry and cultural relics stolen by Zhu Yingfeng, which did not let this tomb robber succeed.
However, at that time, there was no particularly perfect and strict legal provisions for tomb robbery, and Zhu Yingfeng also escaped the disaster, but only returned the stolen jewelry and was not imprisoned.
Without repentance, he tasted the sweetness of the previous tomb robbery, and began to do the illegal business of reselling cultural relics.
With the improvement of the law, the mainland has also made explicit provisions for tomb robbery.
According to the provisions of article 328 of the Criminal Law of the People's Republic of China, whoever excavates an ancient cultural site or ancient tomb with historical, artistic or scientific value shall be sentenced to fixed-term imprisonment of not less than three years but not more than ten years and shall also be fined;
If the circumstances are serious, he shall be sentenced to fixed-term imprisonment of not less than 10 years, life imprisonment or death, and shall also be fined or have his property confiscated.
For a tomb robber like Zhu Yingfeng, although justice will be late, it will not be absent. Later, together with others, he stole other ancient tombs and was arrested by the relevant departments.
Just as the so-called time has not yet come, this rampant grave robber has finally received the punishment he deserves, and he will spend the rest of his life in prison.
05 The archaeological cause has a long way to go and resolutely resist tomb robbery
This time, archaeologists excavated hundreds of precious cultural relics from the joint tombs of Zhu Yiyu and his concubines of the Ming Dynasty, showing some of the real situation of the Ming Dynasty royal family hundreds of years ago.
Even a small road guide can become a physical witness of history and culture. Therefore, for those tomb robbers who want to satisfy their own selfish desires, because of their selfishness and wanton behavior, how many precious cultural relics of the Chinese nation have been destroyed, and how many cultural treasures belonging to the Chinese nation have been left in other countries.
The survey and excavation of ancient tombs is an extremely large project, and in order to preserve these cultural relics in good condition, it has consumed a lot of manpower, material resources and financial resources. It is also the excavation of archaeologists that can bring back the treasures of Chinese culture buried in the ground for hundreds or even thousands of years.
After the founding of New China, archaeologists have made great achievements in the study of ancient humans to the Ming and Qing dynasties, and archaeological technology has made continuous breakthroughs and archaeological theories have become increasingly perfect.
One of the important reasons why the 5,000-year-old civilization of China has been able to be continuously inherited and developed is the recognition of culture and national concepts by ancient dynasties.
After several generations of archaeologists continue to struggle, archaeological discoveries not only verify history, enhance the credibility of history, but also enrich the connotation of history and activate the history of the past.
It is precisely because of these major archaeological discoveries that the historical context of the origin and development of Chinese civilization is connected, and the brilliant culture created by the Chinese nation in ancient times is also displayed to the world one by one, and their appearance constantly proves that the Chinese civilization is in the same vein, and also shows the world that China is a country with an unbroken civilization of five thousand years.
As the main force in the excavation of historical relics, archaeologists continue to contribute to enhancing national cohesion and strengthening cultural self-confidence, and they shoulder heavy responsibilities, but for the protection of cultural relics, it is far from enough to rely on these archaeologists.
As a son and daughter of China with a strong patriotic heart, we must also take the protection of cultural relics as our own responsibility, and we should not only take care of our own small profits, but ignore the cultural inheritance of the Chinese nation and ignore the protection of cultural relics.
Historical artifacts and monuments are non-renewable resources that can never be recovered if destroyed. The protection of these ancient cultural relics has also continued the spirit and context of the Chinese nation.
There is no doubt that for the shameful behavior of those who rob tombs, any son and daughter of the Chinese nation has the responsibility and obligation to participate in the protection of ancient tomb cultural relics and resolutely resist those who steal ancient tombs.