Chapter 5 Chapter V Mausoleum of the First Qin Emperor

Qin Shihuang, named Yingzheng, was a great statesman and strategist in the early feudal society of our country.He succeeded to the throne at the age of 13, took charge at the age of 22, and reigned for 37 years.During his reign, he merged six countries and established the first unified and centralized feudal country in the history of our country.Since then, a series of measures have been taken to abolish the enfeoffment system, establish the prefecture and county system, unify weights and measures and writing, and build the Great Wall in the north to resist the Xiongnu, which has contributed to the development of the country.At the same time, he carried out large-scale construction projects, built palaces and tombs, and cruelly exploited and oppressed the people. Therefore, shortly after his death, the Qin Dynasty was overthrown by the peasant uprising.

The Mausoleum of Qin Shihuang is located at the northern foot of Lishan Mountain, five kilometers east of Lintong County, Shaanxi Province. It is one of the largest imperial mausoleums preserved in ancient my country.The mausoleum system created by Qin Shihuang had a great influence on the architecture of the mausoleums of successive emperors. In 1961, the State Council announced the Mausoleum of the First Qin Emperor as a national key cultural relic protection unit. In 1988, it was listed as a world cultural heritage by UNESCO. After Qin Shihuang ascended the throne, he began to build his mausoleum in Lishan.After the unification of the world, another 700,000 people were recruited from all over the country to participate in the mausoleum construction project. Qin II continued to build it, and it took nearly 40 years. Until the death of Qin Dynasty, the mausoleum was not fully completed.The vastness of the project is rare in history.According to historical records: "The mausoleum" is more than 50 feet high, and it is more than five miles around. There are various palaces built in the tomb, and all kinds of rare treasures are displayed. in order to shoot those who entered the grave.When Qin II buried Qin Shihuang, he ordered all the childless maids in the first emperor's palace to be buried.In order to prevent leaks, the craftsmen who participated in the construction of the tomb were buried alive in the tomb.After the death of Qin Dynasty, Xiang Yu went to Guanzhong and mobilized 300,000 soldiers to excavate the tombs of previous dynasties. The funerary objects were looted, and the treasures were transported for a month.The above-ground buildings of the Mausoleum of Qin Shihuang were also burned to the ground.According to legend, a shepherd entered the tomb after looking for sheep. He held a fire for lighting, which caused a fire in the underground palace, which lasted for three months and could not be extinguished.At the end of the Tang Dynasty, the Huangchao peasant uprising army entered Chang'an and also excavated the Mausoleum of Qin Shihuang.During the Five Dynasties, the warlord Wen Tao once again robbed Qin Shihuang's Mausoleum on a large scale in the name of raising military pay.After more than 2,000 years of wind and rain erosion and man-made destruction, the buildings on the ground of Qinshihuang Mausoleum have disappeared, and only a huge tomb remains.

Since 1949, archaeologists have conducted many surveys on the Mausoleum of Qin Shihuang, and have a general understanding of the layout of the cemetery, and discovered a number of underground burial pits, tombs, tombs of tomb builders and various architectural sites. The mausoleum area is located in the front of the alluvial fan at the northern foot of Lishan Mountain, extending to Lishan Mountain in the south, Xinfengyuan in the north, Yuchishui in the east, and the ancient river channel west of Zhaobeihu Village in the west, covering an area of ​​more than 40 square kilometers (Figure 3).

The cemetery is in the middle of the mausoleum area. It is composed of two inner and outer city walls.The outer city is 2165 meters long from north to south and 940 meters wide from east to west.The inner city is 1,355 meters long from north to south, and 580 meters wide from east to west. In the northeast corner, another small city is built using the north and east walls.The city walls are all rammed, with a base width of about 8 meters.There is a gate on each side of the inner and outer city, facing each other in pairs, and the small city has only two gates, the north and the south.Gates are built at each gate, and there are turrets at the four corners of the inner city.

The mausoleum is located in the southern part of the inner city.The sealing soil is in the shape of a three-level table-top bucket with a flat top.The base is 515 meters long from north to south, 485 meters wide from east to west, and the existing one on the ground is 350 meters long from north to south, 345 meters wide from east to west, and about 76 meters high.According to drilling, the plane of the underground palace is nearly square, with an area of ​​about 180,000 square meters, surrounded by walls made of adobe bricks.There are doors and slope-shaped doorways on three sides: five on the east side, one on the west and north sides.

Cai Yong of the Eastern Han Dynasty recorded in "Du Juan": "In ancient times, there were no tomb sacrifices. When Qin Shihuang went out of bed, it started at the side of the tomb, and the Han Dynasty did not change it." Ying Shao later said the same thing.The emperor's cemetery dedicated to sleeping began with Qin Shihuang.The sleeping hall is more than 50 meters northwest of the mound.The base plan is nearly square, with an area of ​​about 3,500 square meters, with a high platform in the middle and corridors around it.In the northwest of the dormitory, within a range of 670 meters in length from north to south and 250 meters in width from east to west, building foundations were found arranged in groups from south to north, with gravel roads connecting them.A group that has been excavated includes four building foundations that are arranged horizontally from east to west, and the steps and indoor floors are all built with bluestone.Based on its scale and shape, it is speculated that it should be the "Biandian".On the east, west and south sides of the inner city, there are also the ruins of corridors built along the wall.Between the inner and outer walls in the northwest of the cemetery is the "food official" who worships food. Three groups of building foundations have been found, and a copper chime bell made by Yuefu was unearthed, engraved with "Lishan Garden" and "Lishan (饣人)〔si食〕Official’ pottery.The building materials found near these ruins include stone waterways, hollow bricks, large slate tiles, and Kui pattern tiles with a diameter of more than half a meter, which shows that the cemetery buildings at that time were quite magnificent.

A large number of burial pits are distributed on both sides of the mound and between the inner and outer city walls. Among the pits that have been excavated are rare birds and animals and bronze chariots and horses.The bronze chariot and horse pit is 20 meters to the west, and the plane of the pit is in the shape of a Chinese character.Two bronze chariots and horses arranged in front and back were unearthed in a passageway, about 1/2 the size of real chariots and horses.The chariots have two wheels and a single shaft, each of which is driven by four horses, and a figurine of an imperial official sits on each chariot.The saddles of the chariots and horses are complete, the whole body is painted and decorated with a large amount of gold and silver, and the workmanship is gorgeous and fine.In the northwest corner of the mound, there is a large tomb in the shape of a letter A.More than 20 tombs were found in the small city in the northeast corner of the inner city, which may be a burial area.

In the southeast of the cemetery, there are sacrificial tombs and secondary burial pits.The burial utensils of the sacrificial tomb are a coffin and an outer coffin.The burials consisted of men and women, all aged around 20-30 years old, with messy bones and incomplete limbs. It was obvious that they were buried together after the killing.The deceased may be the princes, princesses or ministers of the clan who were massacred by Qin II.The burial pit is divided into three rows from the north to the south, and the arrangement is dense and orderly. Kneeling pottery figurines and horse bones are buried in the pit.The unearthed artifacts are engraved with words such as "middle stable", "official stable" and "three stables", indicating that these pits symbolize the stables of the palace, and the figurines are servants who raise horses.

One kilometer southwest of the cemetery, there is a cemetery for burying servants or prisoners who died during the construction of the mausoleum.The tombs are narrow and small, and each pit buried 213 corpses, basically young and middle-aged men.From the texts on the unearthed fragments of tiles, it is known that the deceased were all recruited from the original six kingdoms of Shandong to serve. In the northwest of the cemetery, there is a site for making stone materials, covering an area of ​​about 750,000 square meters. Various iron tools and stone materials were unearthed.There are also pottery kilns for firing pottery products around the cemetery, among which the west side of the cemetery is relatively dense.A 10-meter-high and more than 1,400-meter-long embankment was built at the mouth of the Lishan Mountain in the southeast of the cemetery, so that the flood water would flow eastward after leaving the mountain, so as to prevent the cemetery from being affected by mountain floods. The design is very careful.About 2.5 kilometers to the north of the mausoleum, the terrain is low-lying due to the excavation of soil for the mausoleum, and the accumulated water forms a pond, which is called "fish pond".In the northeast of Yuchi, there is a large palace building base with an area of ​​about 1 million square meters. It is speculated that it may be the site of Qin Bushou Palace in the Warring States Period. It was used as a palace when Qin Shihuang built his mausoleum.

1,200 meters northeast of the east gate of the cemetery, a group of four terracotta warriors and horses pits were discovered, sitting on the west and facing east, divided into two rows from north to south, with a total area of ​​25,380 square meters.Pit No. 1 is in the south, rectangular in plane, 210 meters long from east to west, 62 meters wide from north to south, 4.5-6.5 meters deep, and has five slope passages on each side.Pit No. 2 is located in the northeast of Pit No. 1. It is curved in plane, 124 meters long from east to west, 98 meters wide from north to south, and 3.2 meters deep.There are three on the east and west sides, and one slope passage on the north.Pit No. 3 is located in the northwest of Pit No. 1. The plane is concave, with an area of ​​520 square meters and a depth of 5.2-5.4 meters. There is a slope doorway on the east side.Pit No. 4 is an empty pit, probably abandoned before it was built.Pit No. 1, No. 2 and No. 3 are filled with pottery warrior figurines, horses and wooden chariots, etc., which are close to the actual size.Judging from the excavated Pit No. 3 and a small part of Pit No. 1 and No. 2, it is estimated that about 7,000 pottery figurines, 642 pottery horses, and 130 chariots were buried.Judging from the relics, the three pits are tunnel-style buildings with a mixed civil-engineering structure, with two-story platforms rammed along the edges of the pit walls, and multiple rammed earth walls were added to the pits in the first and second pits to divide them into several "rooms".Symmetrical wooden pillars are placed on both sides of the pit wall, and the shed is built with wood and reed mats, and then covered with pressed marl and soil, about two meters above the ground.The bottom of the pit is paved with bricks [man slow].The doorway is blocked with standing logs, and then filled with soil and compacted.

The eastern half of Pit No. 1 has been excavated. Eight wooden chariots were unearthed, each of which drove four pottery horses, and 1,087 pottery figurines were unearthed.Except for a row of figurines on both sides, they all face east.The figurines are divided into two types: chariot soldiers and infantry soldiers, and there are two types of identities: military officials and soldiers.There are differences between crowns and clothing, some wear armor and some don't.There are two types of soldier figurines, one is infantry attached to chariots, and the other is independent infantry.Chariots and infantry are arranged alternately, with infantry as the main body, divided into forward, rear, main body, flanks and other parts, forming a regular infantry formation. More than 1,000 warrior figurines, more than 80 chariots, and more than 300 pottery horses were unearthed from Pit No. 2, divided into chariot soldiers, infantry soldiers, and cavalry soldiers.The whole is facing east.The infantry is in the front left, the left side is basically cavalry, the right side is chariot soldiers, and the chariot soldiers in the middle are followed by infantry, forming a large mixed army formed by the joint formation of various arms. Pit No. 3 has a small area, with a painted wooden chariot in the middle, and terracotta guards in armor on the left and right sides. They are arranged opposite to each other along the four sides of the pit wall. According to expert research, it should be the headquarters that governs Pit No. 2. The warrior figurines and chariots were originally equipped with practical weapons, but most of them are missing.All kinds of pottery figurines use different types of weapons according to their location, identity and posture analysis, including short weapons such as daggers, spears, halberds, swords, shields, bows, and arrows, and long-range weapons.Metal weapons are mostly made of bronze, except for a few made of iron, which are very bright and sharp up to now.Tests have shown that most of the surface has been treated with chromium salt oxidation to increase the ability to resist rust, showing a high level of craftsmanship. The production of pottery figurines and horses generally uses pottery molds to turn out the tire shapes according to different parts, and then connect and glue them together, and then sculpt the details, and paint the exterior with bright colors.Most of the color has fallen off, and according to analysis, the texture is mostly mineral.There are many kinds of colors, mainly red, green, and black, supplemented by blue, white, yellow and other colors, which are used alternately on different parts, which looks very magnificent and harmonious.The shapes of figurines show different characteristics and expressions due to their different origins, status and experiences.More than a thousand warrior figurines not only have different costumes, but also have different expressions. They have a strong artistic appeal and can be called a model of ancient Chinese art. Researchers have different views on the meaning of the terracotta army formation: some think it symbolizes the military formation of Qin Shihuang's eastward expedition to the six countries, or that it symbolizes the guard of honor for Qin Shihuang's travels, or that it symbolizes the guards stationed outside Xianyang.However, it is certain that they belonged to the military formation for funerals, and this burial custom also affected the Han Dynasty.These terracotta warriors and horses not only vividly reproduce the majestic scene of the King of Qin sweeping Liuhe, but also provide a scientific basis for the study of the layout of the army, the combination of arms, and weapons and equipment at that time.