Just after the National Day in 1955, a special "request for instructions report" was sent to the desk of Premier Zhou Enlai of the West Flower Hall in Zhongnanhai.
The report was co-signed by six people, two of whom we know very well, one is the famous Chinese writer and archaeologist Guo Moruo, and the other is Wu Han, the then deputy mayor of Beijing.
In addition to his position as vice mayor, Wu Han has another academic title: an expert in the history of the Ming Dynasty.
The contents of this report, even in Chinese history, are unprecedented, because they want to ask the central government to organize the excavation of the Ming Dynasty Changling Tomb in Beijing.
(Report Content)
Changling is the most famous mausoleum in Beijing's "Ming Tombs", known as the "head of the Ming Tombs", and is the joint tomb of Ming Chengzu Zhu Di and Empress Xu.
The archaeological excavation of Changling is an earth-shattering event in the archaeological community and even in Beijing as a whole.
When word spread about Guo and Wu's proposal to excavate Changling, Zheng Zhenduo, then director of the Cultural Relics Bureau of the Ministry of Culture, and Xia Nai, deputy director of the Institute of Archaeology of the Chinese Academy of Sciences, were stunned.
(Left Zheng Zhenduo, right Xia Nai)
The two of them joined forces to warn Wu Han that at that time, New China did not fully properly develop the technology and conditions of such a large imperial tomb, and once excavated, the protection and restoration of cultural relics would be a huge problem.
But Wu Han was very stubborn at that time, firmly believing that the republic had been established for six years, and also trained a class of archaeology students, with the conditions for research and development of such a large mausoleum.
As a result, the proposal finally fell to the ground.
A year later, the excavation of the imperial tomb went through a series of ups and downs, and finally reached the moment when the gate of the underground palace was opened.
Everyone on the scene was full of curiosity and nervousness, and they had been looking forward to this moment for too long. But at that time, no one expected that this intrusion into the underground palace world would soon trigger the most painful tragedy in the Chinese archaeological community.
At that time, the news movie "Underground Palace" completely recorded the whole process of this wonderful adventure, and after the new century, CCTV quoted the images of that time and interviewed the parties, and launched the documentary "Legend of Dingling".
With the help of these two films and television works, we can also get a glimpse of the real face of this archaeological excavation from front to back.
01. From Changling to Dingling
At the beginning of December 1955, the "Changling Excavation Committee" was established.
The committee members consisted of Guo Moruo, Shen Yanbing, Wu Han, Deng Tuo, Fan Wenlan, Zhang Su, Xia Nai, Zheng Zhenduo, and Wang Kunlun.
In the spring of 1956, the archaeological team entered the Ming Tombs area to investigate, and the target they chose was the Changling Tomb built by Zhu Di, the ancestor of Ming Cheng.
Because the Changling Tomb was the best preserved and the largest mausoleum at that time. Archaeologists believe that there must be a huge number of precious cultural relics in changling that can be used as a factual basis for studying the history of the Ming Dynasty.
But after investigation, the research plan almost came to a standstill, because the underground palace of the ancient emperor's mausoleum was extremely secretive, and the Changling tomb was so large that the archaeological team carried out several weeks of tentative excavations and found nothing.
At a loss, the archaeological team changed its thinking.
They thought of finding another small-scale mausoleum in the Ming Tombs for a tentative excavation, summing up the excavation experience, and then officially excavating the Changling Tomb.
At this time, a mausoleum southwest of Changling came into their field of vision.
This is Dingling.
Dingling is the joint burial tomb of Zhu Yijun, the thirteenth emperor of the Ming Dynasty, with Empress Xiaoduanxian and Empress Xiaojing, who reigned for forty-eight years, the longest reigning emperor of the Ming Dynasty, also known as the "Wanli Emperor".
The choice of Dingling as the target of the test excavation was not rigorously scientifically demonstrated, and the archaeological team was only based on an idea and a fortuitous discovery.
This idea was proposed by Wu Han and Xia Nai.
They believe that the Dingling Tomb was built later in the Thirteen Tombs, and it will be easier to repair, and the Wanli Emperor reigned for 48 years, and the historical materials must be more abundant.
(Xia Nai)
The fortuitous discovery came from the archaeological team.
They found that a crack in the wall near Dingling had appeared that had been cracked by age, and it was reasonable to speculate that this crack connected to the entrance of the underground palace, so it provided "natural conditions" for the excavation of Dingling.
Eventually, the team decided, based on this clue, to begin a tentative excavation.
02, find the underground palace
According to historical records, Dingling has been destroyed many times in the past few hundred years, and many buildings outside the mausoleum have been burned down after the Qing army entered the customs, Li Zicheng set fires, and many tomb robberies.
In order to excavate the Dingling Tomb, the archaeological team could only make a fuss along the cracked wall.
In the early morning of May 9, 1956, Zhao Qichang and Bai Wanyu led a team to the scene, in addition to professional staff, the archaeological team also found 38 nearby migrant workers, and under an order, the leader of the migrant worker team Wang Qiqi dug up the first shovel.
As soon as the cave was dug to a depth of one meter, a voice came from the migrant worker's side: "It seems that there is a word?" ”
Because most of the migrant workers were illiterate, Zhao Qichang and Bai Wanyu rushed over and gently brushed away the floating soil with a brush, only to see three shallow carved handwriting come into view: Tunnel Door!
After careful identification, experts believe that this is not a deliberately false "lost stone road", but a mark left by ancient workers to identify the tunnel entrance.
This also confirmed their previous speculation that under this wall was indeed the entrance to the underground palace.
The excavations continued, and a dozen days later, there were many new harvests under the long wall.
They found that under the carved stone of the "Tunnel Gate", a gate and a turning wall made of Ayutthaya bricks were revealed, which should be the first gate to the underground palace.
In order to reduce the workload and reduce the archaeological time, the first trench was abandoned, and the archaeological team turned to the excavation of the second trench.
It turned out to be a wrong decision, and the second trench grew deeper and wider without finding anything.
Months were wasted, the archaeological team found nothing, and a sense of despair gradually spread.
After the rainy season, in September, the turnaround appeared, and a migrant worker found a small stone with an inscription.
The stone is engraved with a line of words: to the front of the Wall of Kongo, the skin is sixteen feet deep and three feet and five feet deep.
The so-called King Kong Wall is the Ming Dynasty's name for the tomb wall of the underground palace. The discovery of this stone stele almost indicates the location of the underground palace and becomes a key to open the Dingling underground palace.
Based on the clues provided by the small stone jie, the archaeological team adjusted the plan again and excavated a third trench.
To speed up the efficiency, the archaeological team set up scaffolding, but the thick soil layer was not easy to excavate, and it was not until May 1957 that the underground palace wall was found.
Although it took a long time, the appearance of the King Kong Wall gave all the team members a shot in the arm. What's even more exciting is that there is a mysterious trapezoidal opening on the Wall of Kongo.
Experts judge that this should be the entrance to the burial of the Wanli Emperor more than 300 years ago.
Finding the King Kong Wall and the entrance, the archaeological team did not dare to open it hastily, because it was summer again, and it was about to be the rainy season in Beijing, and they were ready to wait until after the rainy season to excavate.
During the four months of waiting for the rainy season, the archaeological team has been preparing to open the underground palace, and the excitement of finding the Kongo Wall has gradually disappeared, and there is an atmosphere of fear gradually spreading throughout the team.
03. Exploration of the underground palace
Whether it is "Notes on the Tomb Robber" or "Ghost Blowing Lights", we have seen such a plot: the so-called Lieutenant touching gold can find the entrance to the underground palace as long as he takes a compass and reads a few words, and the real difficulty is the mechanism under the underground palace, poison gas and even monsters.
In fact, in reality, on the contrary, it is the most difficult to find and dig the entrance to the underground palace.
Because archaeology is not tomb robbery, every shovel must be very careful, so the workload is heavy and time-consuming. After finding the dungeon, the work will become easier.
However, seeing that the trapezoidal entrance on the Kongo Wall was there, the task force was in trouble.
Because like in the novel, there are many ancient books in China that many emperors have complex deadly mechanisms in the underground palace in order to keep the tombs from being excavated, and once the tombs are invaded, the organs will be activated, and the intruders will die without a place to bury.
The professionals of the task force must have known this, but the emperor's mausoleum was excavated for the first time, and no one had ever gone down before, whether there was a specific organ gas, whether there would be dead people when they went in, and no one could give a letter of approval.
So when the team took down the bricks above the trapezoidal opening one by one, everyone couldn't help but be afraid.
As soon as the underground palace was opened, the yin wind blew out from inside, making the staff shudder, and with a particularly strong smell of decaying wood and mold, which was particularly strong enough to remind people of the Yin Cao Underground Mansion.
(Dingling Entrance)
After the bricks were taken down, the crowd made a mistake: What if there is a real secret weapon? Who was the first to get in?
So they used the oldest method of determining fate: casting lots.
After casting lots and preparing to enter, Dingling suddenly ushered in two consecutive days of thunderstorm weather, thunder and lightning, rain did not fall much, two days non-stop.
Although the archaeological team are all scientific workers, they can't help but make a mistake in their hearts, and Bai Wanyu even quipped with the archaeologists: Is it the Wanli Emperor who appeared?
There was no way, the work could not be delayed, and finally Bai Wanyu spoke, letting Pang Zhongwei go down with courage and telling him: Everything is ready.
Later, Pang Zhongwei also wrote a book about this experience, called "The Personal Experience of the Excavation of Dingling Tomb".
Holding a flashlight tied to a rope, Pang Zhongwei slowly inched into the mausoleum, knocking on the ground with a shovel for each step, testing whether there was a hidden weapon mechanism.
After walking for a while, the people outside the cave could not hear the sound, and someone shouted in a hurry: "How is it inside?" ”
Only to hear Pang Zhongwei reply: "It's all right." ”
The stones in everyone's hearts fell to the ground, and one by one they walked into this tomb palace that had been sealed for more than three hundred years.
04, the appearance of the inside of the underground palace
As everyone entered the dungeon one after another, the lights of the flashlights were particularly bright in the dark dungeon.
As they walked, they found a door carved from a single piece of white jade.
A flashlight was shone through the crack in the door and a feldspar was found against the door.
In order to open the heavy stone door of the dungeon, the team members made a set of wire, put it on the stone, and slowly moved the feldspar away.
According to the 79-year-old Mr. Sun Xianbao, who was young at the time, he was small in stature, and he used his body against the stone and slowly opened it, which made him the first person to enter the Dingling Mausoleum Underground Palace.
Walking into the underground palace, all archaeologists were calmed down by this century-old mausoleum.
There are magnificent buildings under the underground palace, which are very similar to the style of the Forbidden City, and at the same time, the silence is abnormal, as if they have entered the underground world, and the wind is gusting, blowing them creepy and cold.
And they also became the first people in all of China to see the scene of the emperor's mausoleum and palace.
After passing through the long front nave, all the archaeologists were stunned by what they saw.
The tomb of the Wanli Emperor can be described as a treasure trove of countless treasures, with seats carved from Han white jade.
All kinds of blue and white porcelain, gold and silver jade, phoenix crown xia shuai, jewelry, a variety of dazzling.
Because the wooden boxes containing these funerary treasures have been completely decayed and scattered, all kinds of treasures are directly scattered to the ground.
In the apse, they found the coffins of the Wanli Emperor and the two empresses.
The coffin wood has been decayed to some extent, but the inside of the coffin is still intact.
The top of the wanli emperor's body is covered with a layer of gold quilts, and under the gold quilt is a layer of close funerary objects, in order to protect the cultural relics, the archaeological team can only rise out layer by layer.
In this way, a total of eleven floors were erected, and the cultural relics in the coffin were completely cleaned up, and the skeleton of the Wanli Emperor was revealed in front of everyone.
By the end of the excavation work, which lasted more than two years, there were more than 3,000 cultural relics unearthed in the underground palace, not only the emperor's various gold and silver daily necessities, but also crowns, phoenix crowns, jade belts, dragon robes, pearl agate, Aya luo silk and so on.
Pigo gives a few examples of national treasures.
For example, the Golden Silk Wing Good Crown is the only emperor's golden crown found so far.
Another example is the "Twelve Dragons and Nine Phoenix Crowns", "Nine Dragons and Nine Phoenix Crowns", "Six Dragons and Three Phoenix Crowns" and "Three Dragons and Two Phoenix Crowns" four phoenix crowns, when the staff saw it on the spot, the luster was still dazzling.
There is also a wusha wing good crown worn on the head of the Wanli Emperor.
As well as dragon robes, etc.
The other gold objects are innumerable, and each piece is a national treasure.
05. Archaeological tragedy
The excavation of Dingling unearthed countless treasures, which is logically a successful excavation.
However, in Yue Nan's book "Wind and Snow Dingling", he used such a sentence to describe the excavation work of Dingling: "Thus, the history of Chinese archaeology has opened a sad and bleak page." ”
Why?
That's because, limited to the technical level and scientific conditions at that time, the time for excavating such a large royal mausoleum as Dingling was far from mature.
In the excavation of Dingling, much more was lost than gained, and only lessons were learned, but what was lost was an extremely precious treasure.
Therefore, it is the only imperial tomb that has been officially excavated since the founding of New China, and it is the first and perhaps the last.
It is not difficult to see from the documentary that such a valuable cultural relic, the excavators actually took it with their bare hands, without even wearing a glove or mask.
The cultural relics in our impression may be gold and silver utensils, mostly literati calligraphy and paintings, but the real precious ones are far from these.
Pigo may wish to tell you about the most precious cultural relics in the Dingling Tomb that are limited to the destruction of conditions.
First of all, the golden silk nan wood coffins of the Wanli Emperor and the two empresses were thrown into the ravine behind the Dingling Tomb after being made of imitation coffins for people to visit.
Audiences familiar with "Ghost Blowing Lights" should be very familiar with the "Golden Silk Nanmu", which is the most ideal, precious and advanced building material in Chinese history.
In addition to the value of the precious materials themselves, coupled with the cultural relics value bonus of the emperor's coffin, these three "golden silk nanmu" coffins can be described as a real priceless treasure, and it is no problem to casually value several hundred million.
A week after the coffin was thrown away, Xia Nai heard about it, and he immediately asked the museum to retrieve the coffin for proper preservation.
But the coffins in the valley were long gone, and perhaps the peasants who had gone up the mountain to chop firewood had moved back to their homes, perhaps to make bed furniture, or perhaps to chisel the fire to cook rice.
There are also many wooden figurines in the mausoleum, the face is lifelike, the carving is extremely delicate, and it is a rare treasure. However, the preservation conditions of this cultural relic are very strict, and they need to be vacuum sealed after dehydration in an environment of minus 200 degrees.
However, at that time, the domestic archaeological community did not have this technology at all, and Bai Wanyu could only use the soil method of "wax sealing", and as a result, the wooden figurines were deformed and discolored after waxing, and even the expression was distorted.
What is even more regrettable is the various silk fabrics and costumes in the mausoleum. Limited to the level at that time, a fine piece of clothing of the emperor and empress took ten years for workers to knit.
After opening the mausoleum, due to the lack of timely treatment and technical limitations, all the silk fabrics and robes unearthed in the Dingling Tomb were oxidized after a few days, turned black and decayed, and appeared mildew and decay, becoming black fragments and rags.
(Fragment of the Dragon Robe of the Wanli Emperor)
Xu Pingfang, president of the Archaeological Association of China at the time, recalled that even if the cultural relics that have been preserved, the treatment of some robes and costumes is not satisfactory.
Like using "polymethyl methacrylate" (plastic) to add a softener to apply to semi-rotten clothes, as the paint ages, the clothes will also age and crack, which is very ignorant.
The most precious is the remains of the Wanli Emperor and the two empresses in the coffin.
According to the archaeologists at the time, the three bones were well preserved.
In the documentary, we also saw that although only bones were left, because of the golden silk coffin and the internal anti-embalming measures, after more than three hundred years, the bones were quite complete, and the head still had hair and bright color.
(Note: The remains of the above pictures were mosaicked.) ）
However, these three cultural relics and priceless bones of extremely high scientific value have not been preserved.
After that, Wu Han also reported that he hoped to develop more emperor tombs, but it was never approved again. Later, Wu Han regretted it and admitted that Xia Nai and Zheng Zhenduo had seen farther than himself.
Mr. Zhao Qichang, who participated in the excavation, also said bluntly: "At that time, I was in favor of digging the Dingling Tomb, but because of everything I experienced, now I am not in favor of digging any imperial tomb!" ”
Because of the lessons of Dingling, today, Chinese officials never take the initiative or initiative to excavate valuable mausoleums, especially the tombs of emperors.
Unless the construction of the project is accidentally encountered and the natural disaster is damaged, rescue excavation and protection will be carried out. Because even if the technology is developed to the present, the cultural relics exposed after the excavation of the mausoleum cannot be properly restored and preserved.
Compared with our curiosity to find out, being responsible for the past and being responsible for the future is an attitude that each of us should keep.
Because one day, after we have more advanced technology, in the face of these ancient treasures, we may get more information about the ancients and learn more about the past of ancient humans.
Text/Pippi Film Editorial Department: Ephemera
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