The difficulty of excavating the Mausoleum of Qin Shi Huang

Mondo Culture Updated on 2024-03-07

Many tourists who have visited the Terracotta Warriors and Horses of the Mausoleum of Qin Shi Huang will take a look at the Mausoleum of Qin Shi Huang located at the foot of Li Mountain, although what can be seen is only the mound of sealed soil, but the hill-like sealed soil still makes people feel shocked, and many people are also full of curiosity and reverie about the underground palace of the Mausoleum of Qin Shi Huang buried under the sealed soil. In fact, many people, including some *** archaeologists, are also thinking about when they will be able to excavate the Mausoleum of Qin Shi Huang for various reasons to solve the many unsolved mysteries surrounding Qin Shi Huang. During the Second Session of the National People's Congress in 1984, Deputy Sun Daren, vice governor of Shaanxi Province in charge of culture, education, and tourism, also submitted a proposal for Shaanxi Province to organize forces to excavate the Mausoleum of Qin Shi Huang, but it was finally rejected. It can be expected that it is estimated that it will be impossible to excavate the Mausoleum of Qin Shi Huang in everyone's lifetime, why?

The 55-meter-high mound of sealed soil of the Mausoleum of Qin Shi Huang has a total area of 120,000 square meters

FirstIt is also the most important constraint of national policy. As we all know, due to the initiative to excavate the tomb of the Wanli Emperor of the Ming Dynasty in the 50s of the last century, a large number of precious unearthed cultural relics were destroyed due to poor protection technology and preservation conditions. For those imperial tombs that have been clearly stolen, although it is not forbidden to open the underground palace for cleaning, it is also cautious. For example, in the 70s of the last century, the Qing Dongling Cultural Relics Preservation Institute wanted to open the Yuling underground palace of Emperor Qianlong of the Qing Dynasty to clean up and protect, but it was also written several times, which dragged on for more than two years, and Wang Yeqiu, then director of the State Administration of Cultural Heritage, also personally came to make an unannounced visit to determine that it was indeed necessary to clean up before approving it. Although the underground palace of the Mausoleum of Qin Shi Huang has been stolen and excavated by Xiang Yu and other warlords in the historical books, there has been a great controversy about the authenticity of this record, many years of archaeological work of the Mausoleum of Qin Shi Huang have found that although the burial pits around the mausoleum have been man-made, but the sealed mound on the mausoleum has not found traces of large-scale robbery excavation except for two robbery holes with a diameter of less than 1 meter and a depth of no more than 9 meters, which overthrows the record of Xiang Yu at the end of Qin Dynasty, Shi Hu of the Sixteen Kingdoms of the Eastern Jin Dynasty and Huang Chao, the leader of the peasant uprising at the end of the Tang Dynasty, organized a large number of people to steal and dig.

More convincing is the 2002 national "Qinling Remote Sensing and Geophysical Comprehensive Exploration Technology" of the "863" project, which has carried out large-scale physical, chemical and archaeological exploration of the location, size, structure, and buried objects of the underground palace of the Mausoleum of Qin Shi Huang, and found that the underground palace of the 80-meter-long, 50-meter-wide, and 15-meter-high stone chamber structure where the remains of Qin Shi Huang are buried is still well preserved, and has neither collapsed nor flooded. Since the evidence currently known shows that the underground palace of the Mausoleum of Qin Shi Huang has not been stolen and excavated, it cannot be actively excavated according to the policy. Therefore, if you want to excavate, it will not be possible unless the country's cultural relics policy is significantly changed, but I am afraid that it will not be possible in thirty or fifty years.

Second, to have adequate funding。In the case of assuming a change in national policy, if we really agree to establish a project and excavate it, we must first solve the problem of funding. It is said that "money is not everything, but no money is impossible", and this sentence is also very appropriate for archaeological work. Archaeology is actually very expensive, according to the archaeological procedures, the excavation of this kind of pit pit stone chamber tomb, must start from the excavation of the tomb above the sealed soil, and must be carried out in a large unveiling style, this is a huge project. A few years ago, during the excavation of the tomb of Liu He, the Marquis of Haiding, which was a sensation, the tomb was 7 meters high, and the archaeological team dug it for a year. The Qinling Tomb is 55 meters high, and the volume is much larger than the tomb of the Marquis of Haiding, I don't know how many years it will take, how much manpower and material resources will be used, and the amount of money spent will be a huge amount without counting.

Many people may think that digging such a large mound of soil can not be done by directly sending an excavator to dig hard, do you still have to use people to dig it? In fact, there are often some cultural relics buried in the sealed soil, which contains rich historical and cultural relics information, so it is impossible to use the rough method of mechanical excavation for important tombs, all of which are excavated manually, and the soil that is often dug out has to be screened once or twice to avoid missing some small cultural relics. In view of the importance of the status of the Mausoleum of Qin Shi Huang, it is impossible to directly use an excavator to dig the sealed soil. In addition, there was an important factor that required manual excavation: in 2002, after geophysical and archaeological drilling of the mound, the staff discovered that there was a huge secret buried in the mound - it turned out to be a huge set of rammed earth buildings! The rammed-earth structures, encased in mounds, rise 30 meters above the ground and are covered around the perimeter of the rectangular grave, narrow at the top and wide at the bottom, in the shape of nine steps. Not only that, but there are also wooden buildings with tiled roofs on the nine floors. In this way, it is impossible to directly use machinery such as excavators, and the excavation speed, time and cost will be greatly increased.

Plane and section of stepped wall-shaped rammed earth platform in the sealed mound

This restoration map of the sealed earth building of the Mausoleum of Qin Shi Huang will be more intuitive

In addition, the protection and restoration of cultural relics after excavation also requires a large amount of money. For example, there must be a large number of bronzes buried in the underground palace of the Mausoleum of Qin Shi Huang, and these bronze ritual vessels have been buried for so long, and there must be patina on the surface, and rust removal is necessary to see the ornaments and inscriptions of the utensils clearly, and only then can they be exhibited and studied. According to Sima Qian's "Historical Records", the underground palace of the Mausoleum of Qin Shi Huang is "full of palace officials, strange artifacts, and full of migratory treasures", and the huge underground palace is filled with burial goods, which shows that the number is very amazing, and the funds for the protection and restoration of cultural relics after excavation are naturally a huge amount. And even if the state is willing to allocate money, but spending such a huge amount of money to excavate the Mausoleum of Qin Shi Huang will also bring a lot of social pressure, and some people with ulterior motives and Internet trolls may not let go of this opportunity to attack, which also has to be considered.

Third, the technology for the protection of cultural relics is not developed enough. In fact, this is also the biggest concern of the state to prohibit the active excavation of imperial tombs. Before the excavation, the underground cultural relics have formed a relatively balanced state with the closed burial environment, which helps to slow down or even prevent the natural damage of the cultural relics, so that the cultural relics can still maintain a good state after thousands of years. Once excavated, this relative equilibrium state was suddenly broken, changes in air, light and humidity will lead to damage to cultural relics, such as the famous Terracotta Warriors and Horses of the Mausoleum of Qin Shi Huang, when unearthed, many originally colored terracotta figurines, and then exposed to air oxidation and then turned gray earth-colored. This damage is particularly rapid in tombs that are particularly well sealed. In 1972, when the famous Mawangdui No. 1 Han Tomb was excavated, a half-tripod of lotus root slices was found in a moire lacquer tripod soaked in water. At that time, the lotus root slices were milky white and had clear holes, which were exactly the same as the lotus root slices seen now. However, after the excavation, with the increase in the number of movements and the continuous extension of the time exposed to the air, the lotus root pieces in the ding gradually decreased, and when they were transported to the museum, all the lotus root pieces had mysteriously disappeared.

Although it has been 70 years since the excavation of Dingling, the technology of cultural relics protection and restoration has been greatly improved, but if you want to protect and restore the massive cultural relics of various materials in the underground palace of Qin Shi Huang's mausoleum, all parties still have no bottom in their hearts. Especially due to the lack of archaeological materials, there is basically no knowledge of what cultural relics are in the underground palace of Qin Shi Huang's mausoleum, which also leads to the inability to carry out the preparation of cultural relics protection before excavation, and blind excavation will do far more harm than good. Because of this, Shi Xingbang, a famous archaeologist who likes to dig large tombs and is particularly active in excavating the tombs of Tang Gaozong and Wu Zetian, is also opposed to the excavation of the tombs of Qin Shi Huang, and he believes that cultural relics cannot be renewable, and cultural relics cannot be destroyed because of blind movement, so that the tragedy of Dingling will be repeated, which fully reflects the attitude of archaeologists to respect science.

Mr. Shi Xingbang, an archaeologist who likes to dig large tombs, is also an opponent of excavating the Mausoleum of Qin Shi Huang

FourthCivil resistance. Qin Shi Huang, as the emperor who created the first great unified dynasty in the history of our country, took many measures to consolidate the multi-ethnic country and became the basis for the operation of ancient Chinese society for more than 2,000 years. After digging his tomb, it is estimated that the majority of the people will not agree, and the pressure from all walks of life will be very great.

The author believes that the Qin Tomb itself is extremely difficult to excavate, and as a popular scenic spot, people come and go, and it has been properly protected, there is really no need to take the initiative to excavate, so that all kinds of rights and wrongs and mysteries around Qin Shi Huang and his tomb continue to exist, and continue to attract people to explore and travel here, which is also a good choice at present. (ENDS).

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