On November 14, 2015, at an archaeological excavation site in Nanchang, Jiangxi Province, archaeologists opened a decaying lacquer box and were collectively stunned.
I saw that the box was full of golden cakes, each of which was the size of a child's palm, and there were at least seventy or eighty in one box.
They quickly opened another lacquer box, and it was full of gold, some shaped like a horse's hoof, some like a deer's foot, and beautifully cast.
Before that, they had unearthed a mountain of money made of five baht coins, at least two meters high and weighing more than ten tons.
The archaeological team members asked each other in amazement, "Did we dig up an ancient bank?" ”
Fig.1 Excavating the tomb of the Marquis of Haiding.
In mid-February 2011, Xiong Jusheng, a villager from Guanxi Village, Datangping Township, Xinjian District, Nanchang City, Jiangxi Province, went home from work.
When he rode a motorcycle past a small dirt hill called Dundun Mountain, which he had to pass through to get home from his work, he saw a few strangely dressed outsiders, standing on the side of the road sneakily and not knowing what they were doing.
It is said that they are dressed strangely because they are all wearing trench coats and hoods on their heads to cover half of their faces, and they look like Zhang Qiling in the tomb robbery notes. Xiong Jusheng vigilantly shone the headlights on them and asked them what they were doing.
The men didn't answer at first, and turned their backs to not let him see their faces.
He asked several times before someone answered"Don't worry about it, fellow, we are rabbit sellers, come here to hunt rabbits. ”
Xiong Jusheng didn't believe it at all: You guys are stupid to me? There are weeds and hares on the hill, but this mountain is only a small dirt mountain, how many hares are worth it for you to send so many big men to fight?
Before he could continue to ask, these people packed up their things and walked to the depths of the mountain.
Fig.2 Dundun Mountain (aerial photograph of the tomb of the Marquis of Haiding).
Xiong Jusheng was alone, and he didn't dare to chase after him, so he rode home.
But he has never been steady, and he hasn't slept all night. That night, the dogs in the village barked all night, as if they had sensed that something was wrong.
Xiong Jusheng, who couldn't sleep all night, got up at six o'clock the next morning and called a few villagers to go up to the mountain with him to check.
They found a large newly dug hole next to a cedar tree on the top of the mountain, and it was bottomless.
The soil on the edge of the cave is two or three meters high, and there are hammers, steel drills, eight-treasure porridge, mineral water, gloves and so on next to the mound.
Xiong Jusheng and the others were taken aback, and immediately said, "It's broken." ”
Because it has been said from generation to generation in the vicinity that there is a prince buried under the Dundun Mountain. This hole can't be made by tomb robbers, the tomb of the prince, right?
A villager named Qiu Yilong was very bold and went down to the cave to take a look.
It was found that the hole had been beaten to a depth of more than ten meters, and there were small pits on the wall of the cave for feet to step on.
Fig.3 Villagers go down to the cave.
He had barely reached a third of the way down when he smelled a strange scent of very strong, layers of sawn wood at the bottom of the cave soaked in stagnant water.
After Qiu Yilong came up and told him about the situation, Xiong Jusheng immediately chose to call the police.
**After receiving the alarm**, he attached great importance to it, and while sending someone to investigate, he notified the Jiangxi Provincial Institute of Cultural Relics and Archaeology, and the Institute of Archaeology sent researcher Yang Jun to investigate.
At that time, Yang Jun was cooking at home when he received the news, and the director emphasized when he called him: "It is near the Tiehe River." ”
As soon as he heard this location, Yang Jun's heart was excited, there was a group of Han Dynasty tombs on the other side of the Tiehe River.
And there is also a historical record: "The tomb of Liu He, Marquis of Haiding, is in the city of Changyi, sixty miles northwest of Jianchang County, and there is a large tomb and two hundred small tombs. ”
Changyi City is in Daping Township, it can't be that the tomb of the Marquis of Haiyang was stolen, right?
According to historical records, Liu He was the grandson of Liu Che, Emperor Wu of the Han Dynasty, and the son of Liu Ji, the king of Changyi. Liu Ji's mother is Liu Che's favorite concubine, Mrs. Li.
There are beautiful women in the north, peerless and independent. One look at the city, and then look at the country. Rather than know the city and the country, it is difficult to get a beautiful woman. This "Beauty Song" sings Mrs. Li.
Fig.4 Liu He, Marquis of Haidu.
"Peerless Beauty" and "Alluring Country".These two idioms appeared because of her.
Mrs. Li was deeply favored by Liu Che when she was alive, and after her death, Liu Che let her enjoy the etiquette of the queen and be buried in the position of the queen's mausoleum in Maoling, when the queen Wei Zifu of the main palace was still alive.
There is also a little story after Mrs. Lee's death.
After her death, Liu Che asked the warlock to summon her spirit, wanting to meet her ghost again. Warlock Li Shaoweng really summoned her soul, but only let Liu Che see it through the curtain.
Liu Che made a poem for this, saying, "Yes? Isn't it? Looking at it immediately, why is it too late! Because of this poem, there is the idiom of belated.
Fig.5 Portrait of Mrs. Li.
Because of his pampering of Mrs. Li, Liu Che also doted on her son Liu Ji and named him the king of Changyi. After Liu Che's death, his youngest son Liu Fuling succeeded him as Emperor Zhao of the Han Dynasty.
Emperor Zhao of the Han Dynasty died of illness after reigning for thirteen years, leaving no heirs.
Huo Guang, the general of Quanchen, succeeded Liu He, the son of Liu Ji, who briefly served as emperor for 27 days. According to the records of Zuo Biography, he did 1,127 bad things in less than a month, which was too absurd, and was abolished by Huo Guang, and was later named the Marquis of Haiyang by the new emperor.
If there is really a big tomb in Daping Township, it is likely to be the deposed emperor Liu He.
So Yang Jun threw down the spatula and hurried to Daping Township.
When he arrived at the mountain, he borrowed a cart from a nearby farmer who was digging a well.
He put the cart on the hole, tied a rope around his waist, and went down to the hole with a flashlight and a camera to investigate the situation.
As soon as he went to the cave, he also smelled the peculiar fragrance, and then looked at the bottom of the cave, and recognized at a glance that those sawn off were coffins, and there were actually as many as five layers.
This must have been a high-grade ancient tomb.
Now that it has been destroyed like this, it is necessary to apply for a salvage excavation. The Jiangxi Provincial Bureau of Cultural Relics submitted an application to the state for salvage excavations, which were quickly approved.
Fig.6 Excavating the tomb of the Marquis of Haiding.
On April 15, 2011, the Jiangxi Provincial Institute of Cultural Relics and Archaeology began a comprehensive and systematic investigation of the cemetery and the surrounding area before the excavation.
After investigating, they discovered that the area was actually a cemetery.
The cemetery takes the tomb of the Marquis of Haiyang as the core, and there are 8 tombs of various sizes and 1 carriage and horse pit, with a trapezoidal plane and a total area of 40,000 square meters.
In 2012 and 2013, the archaeological institute spent two years excavating the burial area, and the tombs such as the lady's tomb in the burial area had already been stolen, and only a few cultural relics such as jade swords, ceramics, and lacquerware were unearthed. One of the robbery caves also found a Song Dynasty hat bowl, which is likely to have been left by Song Dynasty tomb robbers.
Fig.7 Unearthed jade swords and ceramics.
But even so, the excavation of the overall layout of the cemetery is also very significant.
The cemetery of the Marquis of Haiyang is the cemetery of the Western Han Dynasty with the best preservation, the most complete structure, the clearest functional layout and a complete sacrificial system that has been discovered so far, and it is a specimen of the tomb of the Marquis of the Han Dynasty.
After all the burial areas were excavated, the excavation of the main tomb of the Marquis of Haiyang began. With only more than 7 meters of bucket-shaped sealed soil, the archaeological team dug for about half a year.
The sealed soil is not ordinary soil, but the rammed earth platform that the ancients used wooden rammer to smash layer by layer. Each layer of rammed earth is only ten to twenty centimeters, with varying thicknesses and clear boundaries in the middle, like mille-feuille cakes.
Fig.8 Burial of real chariots and horses.
The archaeological team hired villagers to peel off the rammed earth layer by layer with hand shovels, and after digging the sealed soil, the edge of the zigzag tomb appeared.
The length of the tomb from east to west and width from north to south are more than 17 meters, with a total area of about 400 square meters.
The archaeological team continued to dig down, removing layers of plaster, fine sand, and charcoal that had been used to prevent theft, and the roof of the burial chamber was exposed to everyone's eyes.
The charcoal has stained the ceiling of the tomb black.
Dozens of black long coffin boards, spliced side by side, guard the coffin.
The tomb robbers accurately hit the hole in the middle of the coffin through the sealed soil more than ten meters high.
The cave made the archaeological team uneasy: to what extent had the inside of the coffin been destroyed, and was there anything left?
Fig.9 Items displayed in Pit 5 of the Tomb of the Marquis of Haiding.
They carefully uncovered the coffin, and the first thing that caught their eyes was the turbid stagnant water, densely packed with burial goods, either soaked in the water or floating on the water.
The experienced experts of the archaeological team came up with a way to dig a well next to the coffin and pump the stagnant water into the well to lower the water level.
After the water is drained out, the coffin in the shape of "Hui" is clearly displayed in front of people.
In the middle of the word is the main coffin room, and the thief hole that cast a shadow on the hearts of all the archaeological team members entered here.
The main chamber is surrounded by a cloister-shaped pavilion, separated by a passageway. The North Tibetan Pavilion is a money storehouse, a grain storehouse, a musical instrument storehouse, and a wine ware storehouse.
Fig.10 Excavated drinking utensils.
*The pavilion is a clothing storehouse, an arsenal, a document archive, and a recreational equipment storehouse.
The East Tibetan Pavilion is mainly a kitchenware warehouse, called the "food official" library in ancient times, and the South Tibetan Pavilion is a carriage and horse warehouse.
Yongdao is the Le Garage. The most eye-catching of all the Tibetan pavilions is the treasury of the North Tibetan Pavilion, a mountain of five-baht coins that is at least two meters high.
Even the well-informed archaeological team members were amazed, and one expert said, "In other archaeological sites before, it is not that I have never seen copper coins, but this time it is really a mountain of money!" I've never seen so much money in my life! ”
It can be seen that the owner of this tomb is shockingly wealthy.
Fig.11 Tongqian Mountain.
After discussion, the archaeological team decided to clean the outer corridor first, and they started cleaning from the northwest corner. There is also a robbery hole in the northwest corner of the coffin.
The age of this cave is very old, and there is a lamp left in the cave from the Five Dynasties period, which should be left by the tomb robbers of the Five Dynasties period.
The coffin near the cave was so badly damaged that it had collapsed.
But after cleaning, the archaeologists found that the tomb robber only destroyed a few lacquer boxes near the cave and left, and did not enter the main chamber, so he did not cause much damage.
Experts speculate that this may be because there was a big ** in Jiangxi during the Eastern Jin Dynasty, which made the tomb collapse and the coffin difficult to enter.
Fig.12 The coffin was damaged and collapsed.
In addition, there was another flood in Poyang Lake during the Southern Dynasties, the groundwater level rose, and the tomb was immersed in water.
The ancients did not have the ability to rob tombs underwater, so the tomb robbers only turned over a few suitcases and had no choice but to leave, so that the tomb of the Marquis of Hailun was fortunately preserved.
Near the robbery cave is the clothes storehouse. It may be that the outside air circulates through the cave, and the silk fabrics such as the burial clothes have rotted so much that there is no trace of it.
All that remained were fragments of patent leather from wooden boxes containing clothes, some broken lacquer boxes, and some signboards.
These signs have holes in the upper circle and lower circles, which are supposed to be hung on top of the lacquer box.
Fig.13 Wooden rafts.
There is Hanli writing on the sign, which says how many silk shirts there are, what color the neckline is, and what color the skirt is, which is clearly written.
After cleaning up the clothes storehouse, they immediately cleaned up the North Tibetan Pavilion.
The Qianshan archaeological team in the money vault of the North Tibetan Pavilion specially sent people, and it took half a year to count, and it really made people "count the money and count until their hands cramp".
After the Qianshan was cleaned up, it was weighed more than ten tons.
After the four Tibetan pavilions in the east, west, south and north were cleaned one by one, and all the things were cleaned up, and finally a total of more than 6,000 precious cultural relics of various kinds were unearthed, including gold, bronze, iron, jade, lacquered wood, ceramics, bamboo weaving, straw weaving, textiles, slips, wooden tablets, etc.
Fig.14 Various precious cultural relics excavated.
Among them, more than 2,300 pieces of lacquered wood and more than 10,000 pieces of bamboo slips and wooden slips were unearthed. There are more than 500 pieces of metal cultural relics such as gold and silverware, bronze and ironware.
There are more than 30 pieces of jade, gemstones, agate, turquoise, etc., more than 100 pieces of ceramics such as patent leather pottery, and 5 pieces of textiles.
Among these relics, in addition to Qianshan, the most eye-catching is a bronze still.
Originally, experts speculated that it was used to make juice or alchemy, but when it was opened, a lot of taro was found inside. Taro is the raw material used in sake brewing.
Until now, taro has been the main ingredient for making sake in Japan. It was only with the discovery of taro that experts understood that this was actually a vessel used to distill and make shochu.
Fig.15 A bronze still.
Before the discovery of this artifact in the tomb of the Marquis of Haidu, it was believed that it was not until the Yuan Dynasty Chinese began to make soju by distillation more than 800 years ago, and it was believed that the distillation method was transmitted from the West.
Its emergence has advanced the history of distilled spirits in China by more than a thousand years, and this understanding has also begun to be re-examined.
There is also a lacquer box filled with cordyceps.
Cordyceps is a fungus, parasitic on the larvae of Cordyceps bat moth, only grows in alpine grasslands above 3,000 meters above sea level.
It was not until the Qing Dynasty that Chinese herbal medicine books recorded Cordyceps in China.
Fig.16 Cordyceps sinensis.
Previously, the Chinese medicine community has believed that the use of Cordyceps began around the time of the Qing Dynasty. The appearance of the lacquer box in the tomb made people discover that as early as the Han Dynasty, high-ranking officials and nobles had begun to use Cordyceps to nourish their bodies.
In addition, there is a bronze bean-shaped lamp, and the word "Nanchang" in Hanli font is clearly engraved on the lamp body. This inscription makes people wonder if the name "Nanchang" is related to the Marquis of Haiding.
Nanchang City was built very early, and it already existed in the Liu Bang period, but how the name was obtained has not yet been accurately determined.
Liu He originally inherited the title of King of Changyi, and his fief was in the area of Juye County, Shandong Province.
Fig.17. Bronze bean-shaped lamp.
Later, he ascended the throne, but after 27 days, he was deposed, renamed Marquis of Haidu, and his fief was changed to the area of Nanchang.
Many lacquerware unearthed from the tomb of the Marquis of Haiyang have the words "nine years of Changyi" and "eleventh year of Changyi", indicating that Liu He may have been attached to Changyi at that time and longed to be the king of Changyi again one day.
According to the analysis of experts, it is likely that he called Shandong where he used to stay "Beichangyi", and the capital city on the shore of Poyang Lake in Jiangxi Province, where he later lived, "Nanchangyi".
Nanchang" may come from this. But there is also a saying that the place name Nanchang already existed in the Qin Dynasty.
In addition, archaeologists pay the most attention to the bamboo slips and wooden slabs.
Fig.18 Text lacquerware.
More than 10,000 slips unearthed from the tomb of the Marquis of Haidu, the contents of which have been translated and sorted out, including etiquette notes, medical books, literary works, copies of the recitals written to the emperor, and so on.
One of the most precious is the Analects.
There were several editions of the Analects before the Western Han Dynasty, and in the last years of the Western Han Dynasty, the official revised these editions uniformly, and some of the contents were deleted.
Later generations only know what the deleted chapter is called, but they don't know the content.
The version of the Analects found in the tomb of the Marquis of Haihuang was preserved before it was revised, and the deleted chapter of "Knowing" was preserved, which was an important supplement to the history of ancient thought. This discovery updates the Analects.
Fig.19 Fragment of the Analects.
After the corridors were cleared, the main coffin was finally the most important and the most worrying part of the experts.
According to the funeral customs of the Han Dynasty, the coffin of the tomb owner is generally in the main coffin room, and the most precious burial items are in the coffin of the tomb owner.
The robbery hole laid by the tomb robbers is located in the main coffin room, and the strength of the technology is breathtaking.
In October 2015, the archaeological team began to prepare for the excavation of the main coffin chamber, and they built a crane facility and a working platform to uncover the roof of the main coffin.
On November 14, the excavation of the main coffin room officially began. After the roof of the main coffin was revealed, everyone breathed a sigh of relief.
Fig.20 Layout of the tomb of the Marquis of Haiding.
Although the tomb robbers pierced the last layer of coffins, the structure of the main coffin chamber of the Tomb of the Marquis of Haihuang was different from that of ordinary Han tombs.
In ordinary Han tombs, the coffin of the owner of the tomb is in the middle of the coffin, such as the tomb of Mrs. Xin Chai in Mawangdui.
However, according to the concept of death as life, the coffin was arranged in the same way as the residence before his death.
On one side is the place where the tomb owner reads and gathers, and on the other side is the daily living place, which is separated by a screen.
The coffin is located in the northeast corner of the coffin, not in the middle, so the coffin of the tomb owner was not damaged and escaped.
However, the tomb robbers did not find nothing, there were two gold cakes scattered near the entrance of the cave, and Yang Jun, the head of the archaeological team, suspected that something had been stolen.
Fortunately, the villagers were vigilant enough and called the police in time, and if they were delayed for another day, the consequences would be unimaginable.
In the northwest corner of the main chamber, the archaeological team found three lacquer boxes and removed 258 gold cakes, each weighing between 230 and 260 grams.
The ancient unit of measurement converted to a modern pound is roughly 250 grams, which means that each gold cake is an ancient pound.
In addition, there are a large number of beautifully made horseshoe gold, lintoe gold, and gold plates. The weight of these gold objects exceeds the weight of all the gold objects excavated from the Han tombs to date.
Fig.21 Horseshoe gold, unicorn gold.
In addition to these dazzling **, the main coffin room also unearthed a screen painted with the life of Confucius, Boshan furnace, bronze branch lamp, jade, bamboo and wood lacquerware and many other precious cultural relics.
In the southeast corner of the main coffin, the archaeological team members also extracted 10 bronze tripods and three bells.
The most important part of the main coffin is the inner coffin.
On December 26, 2015, the archaeological team planned to open the inner coffin, and the opening process was broadcast live on television.
But on the same day, this much-anticipated live broadcast that countless viewers had been waiting for was suddenly canceled.
This puzzled the long-awaited audience and led to a lot of discussions: What's going on? Did something happen to you, or did you suddenly discover something that couldn't be seen by the public, so you canceled the live broadcast?
Fig.22 Boshan furnace.
Archaeological activities have always been mysterious in the eyes of the public, and it is the first time that the coffin was opened live for everyone to see, and the sudden cancellation has aroused a lot of speculation.
No one knew that this was because the archaeological team accidentally discovered that the inner coffin was better preserved than originally expected.
Due to the age is too old, the coffin of the tomb owner has collapsed and disintegrated, and the archaeological team originally expected that the silk fabrics and silk paintings in the coffin were unlikely to be well preserved, so they planned to clean up the scene and broadcast it live.
However, after priing up a crack in the coffin cover and looking inside, the archaeological team found that the preservation of the main coffin was far more complete than expected.
Fig.23 Transporting the coffin.
In order to protect the cultural relics, they temporarily decided to change their plan and transport the inner coffin as a whole to the laboratory, where the coffin was opened, so the live broadcast was canceled.
The Jiangxi Provincial Institute of Archaeology has built a low-oxygen workshop with an area of 20 square meters.
The workshop was filled with nitrogen to reduce the oxygen content and adjust the humidity to prevent the rapid oxidation of the cultural relics when exposed to oxygen after the inner coffin was opened.
The experts opened the inner coffin in the laboratory with oxygen masks.
After the inner coffin was opened, everyone was shocked again: there was no body of the tomb owner in the coffin? Where did the body of the owner of the tomb go?
When the family inspected the inner coffin, they found that it had been soaked in stagnant water for more than 1,700 years, and the body of the owner of the tomb had dissolved, and only a few teeth remained.
However, although the corpse is decayed, according to the placement of the jade in the coffin, it can be roughly inferred that the position of the corpse in the coffin.
A seal was found on the waist of the corpse, and the seal was engraved with the word Liu He, which can prove that the owner of the tomb is indeed Liu He, Marquis of Haidu.
The abdomen of the corpse was magically left behind, and some melon seeds did not decay.
Because of these melon seeds, experts deduced that the owner of the tomb may have died of acute diarrhea caused by eating melons.
Fig.24 Excavated seals.
In addition to the corpse, the bottom layer of the coffin was also covered with a hundred gold cakes, and the gold cakes were covered with a layer of gold silk glazed mats.
There are also jade pendants, jade bi and other funerary items, all of which are exquisite, showing the luxury of the owner.
Experts speculate that this may be because when Liu He was deposed, the Empress Dowager allowed him to take all his belongings with him. When his grandmother was alive, she was very favored by Emperor Wu of the Han Dynasty and received many rewards.
Liu Che favored his father Liu Ji and sealed him to the rich Changyi, where he had accumulated for many years, and these belongings were in Liu He's hands, so he could be so rich.
But despite having so much wealth, Liu He must have been depressed after being deposed, and according to historical records, he died at the age of 33.
Liu He was imprisoned for several years after being deposed, and was only released by the new emperor after Huo Guang's death to show benevolence. But after he was released, he has been closely watched.
Later, it was also resealed to Nanchang, which was very remote and barbaric for people at that time.
It is said that he often boated on the river in Nanchang and sighed indignantly at the waves, and the place where he sighed was later called "Yikou".
A few years after Liu He's death, several of his sons also died mysteriously one after another, causing the Marquis of Haihuang to be cut down because he had no heir.
According to the funeral goods that Liu He brought underground, he should not be just a promiscuous person as recorded in the history books.
Fig.25 The only tomb south of the Yangtze River with a burial pit for real chariots and horses.
The wooden slabs and bamboo slips he buried with him at least show that he liked to read, and the screen with the image of Confucius shows that he respected Confucianism and Taoism.
When Huo Guang deposed Liu He's throne, he said that he had done 1,127 bad things in 27 days after he ascended the throne.
If you calculate this crime carefully, it is actually very unreasonable.
Liu He sleeps for eight hours a day, and even if he doesn't eat or drink, he has to do two or three bad things every hour to do it.
When Liu He was deposed, more than 200 of his vassals he had brought with him from his fiefdom were dragged to the market and executed.
According to the Hanshu book, his subordinates shouted loudly before they died: "If you keep interrupting, you will suffer from it!" ”
Fig.26 Mirror.
The Hanshu does not say why the subordinates shouted like this, but according to the clues in the historical materials, it can be inferred that the real reason for Liu He's deposition was not absurd.
Instead, he wanted to compete for power with Huo Guang, the powerful minister who controlled the government, and then failed.
He was too young when he ascended the throne, and he had no political experience, and he lost the struggle for power with Huo Guang, so he ended up in this fate.
History is written by the victors, and if the tomb of the Marquis of Haiyang is not discovered, Liu He should be in people's hearts that it is the vague appearance recorded in the history books.
But the excavation of this tomb has made people start to look at that period of history anew.
Fig.27 Museum of the Tomb of the Marquis of Haiding.
It has been ten years since the tomb was discovered in 2011, and there are still many unsolved mysteries in the tomb.
For example, the mysterious fragrance, and the many bamboo slips and wooden calves that have not yet been translated. Maybe after these things are restored, we can see more sides of history.