One day in 1988, in Chengzi Village, Juyuan Township, Harbin, Heilongjiang, a villager named Li Liansheng was preparing to build a new house for him. However, when laying the foundation, Li Liansheng found that the ground was full of uneven stones, and it was difficult to dig with a hoe. In desperation, he had to rent an excavator to prepare to dig up all the stones on the ground and then continue the construction. But when the excavator was cleaning the stones, it had no intention of digging out a very neatly polished stone slab. How can there be slate under the ground?
In order to find out what this stone slab was for, Li Liansheng ordered the excavator to dig from the surrounding area and then down, and as he dug deeper and deeper, an old coffin appeared in front of Li Liansheng, and the neat stone slab he had dug up before was actually the cover of the coffin. Building a new house to dig the foundation but digging out the ancient coffin, Li Liansheng only felt obscure, and planned to pick a day to clean up the coffin, and did not think of inviting relevant experts to archaeological excavations. After all, in the countryside, the news is closed, and people's awareness of cultural relics protection is not high, not to mention that it was still the 80s of the last century.
However, the news that Li Liansheng's family dug up the ancient tomb was still passed on in the village, ten or ten hundred, and spread to the local cultural relics department. Immediately, the head of the cultural relics department organized an archaeological team to rush to the scene to prepare for rescue excavations. Before the official excavations, archaeologists first conducted a brief exploration around the cemetery, and then they were pleasantly surprised to find a turtle, a carved stone turtle. In myths and legends, the turtle ranks seventh among the nine sons of the dragon, can ride three mountains and five mountains, and has a very high status. Therefore, some ancient officials and nobles would place turtles in their own cemeteries, or use turtles to make the base of stone tablets, one is to show their identity, and the other is to use the identity of turtles and dragons to calm ghosts and monsters, and protect the souls of the deceased from being invaded after resting.
The tomb is placed in the turtle, and the remains of the tomb owner are not ordinary wooden coffins but coffins, through which archaeologists can basically determine that the identity of the tomb owner is not rich or expensive. What age is the tomb, and what is the identity of the owner of the tomb? At this time, some villagers who watched the liveliness told archaeologists that this should be the tomb of the ancient Tartars. What is Tartar? Tarzi is actually the ancient folk name for the Jurchens of the Jin Dynasty. This villager is not a layman who is casually blind, because Chengzi Village was not ordinary in ancient times, this is the place where the Jurchens of the Jin Dynasty rose, and there are still the ruins of the Jin Dynasty Tucheng on the east side of the village.
Based on the information provided by local villagers, archaeologists went to the ruins of Jin Dynasty Tucheng to investigate, and found that the ruins of Jindai Ancient City next to Chengzi Village were somewhat different from the ruins of Jin dynasty ancient cities in other places, because this site contained horse faces where soldiers fired bows and arrows at the besieging enemy, that is, a military building facility. This also means that this site should be the military center of the Jin Dynasty. Since it is a military stronghold, there are naturally officials stationed here. So archaeologists speculate that the owner of the tomb should be a Jin Dynasty official.
But whether it is or not, it can only be determined through in-depth excavation and study of ancient tombs. It is a vertical pit tomb, and in the middle of the burial chamber is a coffin dug out by an excavator. Because the outermost stone rafters play a very good protective role, the wooden coffins inside are basically well preserved. When archaeologists cleaned the dirt from the lid, they found a silver nameplate in the middle of the lid. This nameplate is about 48.5 cm long and about 35.5 cm wide, and is surrounded by many carved lotus flowers and lotus leaves, which is very delicate. What caught the attention of archaeologists was not the pattern carved on the nameplate, but the 12 characters engraved on it with the seal book "Taiwei Kaifu Yi and the Three Sishi Qi King". This kind of nameplate was called a coffin in ancient times, and was specifically used to record the identity information of the officials at that time. That is to say, since the coffin is so recorded, the owner of the tomb is the King of Qi of the Jin Dynasty. However, it is not so easy to further determine the identity of the owner of the tomb, because in the historical records, there were four Qi kings in the Jin Dynasty, and the archaeologists who wrote the tomb owner was not sure which Qi king was for a while.
With this question in mind, archaeologists finally opened the coffin. Inside the wooden coffin are two remains, placed left and right by a man and a woman, and it is obvious that this is a husband and wife burial tomb. The clothes worn by the two remains are all Very Nomadic Jurchen costumes, and even after more than 800 years, they are still brightly colored and displayed to archaeologists the exquisite patterns on the clothes. The four walls of the coffin are decorated with gold silk fabric draperies, which are also very characteristic of the Jurchens. Later, archaeologists found a wooden plaque under the heads of the two remains, with the words "Tai Wei Yi and the Three Si Shi Qi Wang" on the front and "Fang Yi" on the back. This is actually a land purchase voucher. The so-called land purchase coupon is simply the deed of the deceased's house in Hades, and it is reasonable and legal to have the deceased live in Hades.
Seeing that the coffin and the land purchase coupon are so emphasized the identity of the tomb owner "Tai Wei" and "Qi Wang", so archaeologists have linked these two clues to check the historical materials and found that among the four Qi kings of the Jin Dynasty, there was only Yan Yan, who was the second son of the Sui Guo Gong Completed Yan A clutch, and the historical data did not have much ink on him, but his cousin was very famous in history, and was the founding emperor of the Jin Dynasty, Jin Taizu, who completed Yan A bone. And archaeologists have examined the teeth of the male remains and found that he died at the age of 70. In the historical data, Yan Yan did die around the age of 70. That is to say, the owner of the tomb is a couple of yan yan and wife.
After determining the identity of the owner of the tomb, archaeologists began to formally carry out more in-depth clean-up and excavation work. Although Yan Yan's remains have basically decayed, his beard and hair are basically well preserved, and it can be clearly seen from the color of his hair that he died in old age. The clothes on Yan Yan's remains are 8 layers, which are very gorgeous, and they also wear a jade handle short knife around their waists. But the remains of the woman next to her were a little strange, because her face was completely wrapped in a veil woven of yellow silk. Across the veil, you can see the three-dimensional sense of the face, and gently press with your hand, you can also feel some elasticity, all of which seems to tell archaeologists that the face under the veil has not yet decayed. Could it be that this female remains are also the same as Madame Xin Chai of Mawangdui, a corpse of an incorruptible woman?
However, after unveiling the veil, archaeologists were disappointed, and the face of the female remains was similar to the remains of Yan Yan, and it was basically decayed. And the thing that makes archaeologists feel three-dimensional and elastic across the veil is actually a ball of silk thread. But this ball of silk is not ordinary silk thread, but silk that has not been processed. Although silk is now very common, ancient silkworm reeling is also relatively popular. However, because silk is a natural animal fiber formed by the solidification of the silk liquid secreted by the silkworm silkworm, it is more likely to decay, not to mention the silk that has not been treated at all. Therefore, there is almost no such silk excavated from the ancient tomb, and it can be said that it is the only physical material. This is of very high research value for archaeologists to study the silkworm reeling process in the Jin Dynasty and even the entire ancient period.
However, this has made archaeologists more curious about the identity of the female remains and the reason for covering their faces. Because in ancient tomb customs, only those who felt that they had no face to face their ancestors after death would cover their faces with a face veil. And archaeologists have also found that the female tomb owner should not have died normally, because her skull has been hit by a blunt object and her arm is broken. But what caused her eventual death should be poisoning, because the relevant experts found that it was all the residue of poison through the detection of the white substance in her stomach.
Is this just a martyred concubine, but the clothes on the female remains do not match the identity of the concubine? The female remains not only wear an agate gold necklace around their necks, but also wear more elegant and luxurious clothes than Yan Yan's, wearing 9 layers, a total of 16 pieces. And the variety of clothes is extremely rich, silk, silk, luo, brocade, aya have everything, skirts worn all year round, brocade robes, underwear all greet the body, it can be said that it is a large wardrobe of the jin dynasty nobles.
In addition, the embroidery patterns on the clothes are also very exquisite, with patterns such as cranes, flowers and dragons and phoenixes. However, as archaeologists cleaned up the clothes that could fill the gaps in the Jin Dynasty in China's costume system one by one, they found a very peculiar style of gold brocade skirt, which was not nomadic, and the style of Han service was also very different, but like Western-style clothing. Because not only does it have a large opening in the back, it is tied with two belts, and the skirt is also sexily forked, a bit like the Western backless evening dress. The pants with this skirt are also very strange, like the kind of garters worn by modern women. After taking off the garter socks, there is a pair of pants like modern foot leggings, and on the inside of this foot leggings, the two Chinese characters of "introspection" are written.
Since it is a Chinese character, will the female remains be a Han Chinese? Based on this clue, archaeologists consulted relevant historical materials and found that the female remains were indeed a Han Chinese, and a Han person with an unusual identity. In 1126, the Jin soldiers once again went south, attacked the Song dynasty capital of Beijing, and escorted all the concubines and children of Emperor Huizong of Song to the north to marry the nobles of the Jin Dynasty as concubines, and Zhao Jingu, the 21st daughter of Emperor Huanzong of Song, was forced to marry Yan Yan. After that, he was forced to give the enemy Yan Yan a martyrdom, and Zhao Jingu should have felt that he had no face to face the ancestors, so he chose to cover his face with a face veil. As for the Western style of Zhao Jingu's clothes, it may be related to the openness and inclusiveness of the culture of the Song Dynasty at that time.
That's all for this issue, thank you for watching, stay tuned!