Found by accident, the tomb of Emperor Qin is arguably one of the most astounding finds of all time. In 1947, workers digging a well happened upon a life-size model of a soldier made of terracotta. The Chinese government was notified and government archaeologists were dispatched to the site located outside the city of Xi'an, China.
Thousands of terra cotta figures were found after much digging. Each soldier has a unique facial expression and patches of paint hint at the soldiers once being brightly painted. The soldiers are also position according to rank. The estimated amount of soldiers lies somewhere around 8,000 but the real amount may never really be known. The photograph below shows the sheer magnitude of the army protecting Emperor Qin.
Emperor Qin's tomb itself remains unexcavated but modern tests indicate large concentrations of mercury at the site which give credence to some historical accounts of what is inside the tomb. Some historical texts have been translated as saying that the tomb "contains replicas of the area's rivers and streams made with mercury flowing to the sea through hills and mountains of bronze. Precious stones such as pearls are said to represent the sun, moon, and other stars."
I think it’s really interesting how all that stuff can just sit under the earth for years and years and nobody will ever know it’s there. 8000 unique solders were made and then buried underground and lost for that long. This is probably what I find most interesting about archaeology is that the impacted this emperor made on the earth and his ability to commission 8000 statues made for him only to be forgotten until someone said “hey we should put a well here.” While the pictures where a nice touch to the blog I feel like you could have put a lot more interesting information about this site into this starting post. Who was Emperor Qin? Why does he get such an opulent temple?
ReplyDeleteVery nice first entry, perhaps a little short, but the images are very cool. I was interested in this post because my Aunt has actually taken the tour there and while she talked a little about the paint disintegrating when they uncovered the statues, I wanted to know more. I had heard about a tomb with a river of mercury flowing through it, but I had heard that it was merely a rumor. How does this river work, or has all of the mercury been extracted?
ReplyDeleteHow do you suppose this tomb was lost? There are stories of soldiers killing all of the guests at imperial funerals in order to keep the burial grounds a secret, but do you suppose the same thing happened here? Also, what first interested you in pursuing this as your blog topic?
Some images of the excavation of the tomb would be cool for a following entry, and there may be movie clips about the tomb. If not, I think you could say that Emperor Qin inspired the 3rd Mummy movie, so you could add clips, if you felt like bridging over into the “entertainment that was influenced by” field.
I hope that the questions and suggestions are all right, if they are helpful in pursuing an angle for the following entry, then awesome. If not, then don’t worry about it, I am sure that the tomb of Qin still holds many fascinating secrets.
I will have to check out the next entry as the story unfolds.