The underground city lost in time

Imaginechina

At the northern foot of Lishan Mountain, near the Weihe River in Shaanxi Province, lies the tomb of China’s first emperor, Qin Shi Huang (259-210 BC) — the man who first united China.

Qin Shi Huang was regarded as a hero for uniting a nation after centuries of war, but also as a cruel leader who enslaved and killed thousands to build his mausoleum — some buried alive. His mausoleum, rediscovered only in 1974, is the home of the famous terracotta warriors and was listed as a World Heritage Site by UNESCO in 1987.

He became the head of the Qin Kingdom when he was 13 and founded the dynasty when he was 38. 

He introduced standardized currency, weights and measures, united his domain through great canals and roads, and built the first section of the Great Wall.

The emperor’s power and wealth grew, so did his obsession with his afterlife.

The power-hungry emperor wanted to take everything and everyone he needed to his next life.

He needed a grand underground palace where he could keep on ruling his empire even after death.  

As written in “Shi Ji” (Historical Records) by Sima Qian in the Han dynasty (202 BC-AD 220), Qin Shi Huang ordered the mausoleum’s construction shortly after taking the throne in 246 BC.

More than 700,000 laborers worked on the project, and it was not completed until 208 BC, almost two years after he died.

Some historians doubt a city large enough to support that many people existed at the time, saying the workforce was more like 20,000.

But no one questions the human cost of the project — archaeologists have found mass burial pits around the mausoleum site piled high with the bones of its builders, some still wearing metal shackles. 

It is believed the workers were killed after the mausoleum was completed and it remained buried untouched for almost 2,000 years.

Sima Qian wrote that the underground city contained palaces and scenic towers for a hundred officials, as well as numerous rare artifacts and treasures. 

There were replicas of rivers and streams made with mercury flowing to the sea through mountains of bronze. Precious stones such as pearls represented the sun, moon and stars. 

It is said that the emperor’s craftsmen were instructed to make traps which would fire arrows at anyone who entered the tomb.

And after the emperor’s body was placed in the tomb, the inner passageway was blocked, and the outer gate was lowered, so as to trap all the craftsmen in the tomb, along with its secrets.

Accidental discovery 

In 1974, a group of farmers digging wells in Lintong County in Shaanxi Province accidentally unearthed a life-size terracotta warrior, which kicked off one of the greatest archeological discoveries of all time. 

Over the past four decades, four pits with about 2,000 terracotta warriors have been partially excavated. Three are filled with terracotta soldiers, horse-drawn chariots, and weapons.

The other is empty, a testament to the original unfinished construction. 

Many of the terracotta warriors were grouped into a specific military formation — a configuration of vanguard bowmen, crossbowmen, outer files of archers, groups of infantrymen and charioteers, and an armored rear guard in line with the military tactics of the time. 

The four excavated pits are now covered with protective roofing, even as the archeologists’ work proceeds at the Terracotta Warriors Museum in Xi’an. 

It is estimated that total of between 6,000 and 8,000 of these warriors were buried with the emperor. Furthermore, the terracotta army is just the tip of the iceberg — as the emperor’s tomb itself remains unexcavated.

Archeological work concentrates on various sites of the extensive necropolis surrounding the tomb, such as the terracotta army to the east of the tomb mound.

Remote sensing technology has been used to probe the tomb. The necropolis complex of the first Qin emperor is a microcosm of the his empire and palace, with a 76-meter-tall tomb mound at the center, shaped like a truncated pyramid. 

It was intentionally designed to resemble the capital of the Qin Dynasty (221-207 BC), Xianyang in today’s Shaanxi Province. 

It includes both an inner and outer city, divided by two distinct walls. The circumference of the inner city is 2.5 kilometers and the outer is 6.3 kilometers. 

The emperor’s tomb lies in the southwest of the inner city under the mound and facing east. 

The main tomb chamber housing the coffin and burial artifacts is the core of the architectural complex of the mausoleum.

Experimental pits dug around the tomb have revealed dancers, musicians, and acrobats full of life and caught in mid-performance, a sharp contrast to the military poses of the famous terracotta warriors 

Other discoveries also include a royal park with bronze swans, ducks and cranes near the outer wall of the greater mausoleum complex. 

Modern tests on the tomb mound have also revealed unusually high concentrations of mercury, lending credence to at least some of the historical accounts of a mercury river.

But further excavations of the tomb itself are on hold, at least for now.

Concerns include the possibility that booby traps are still functioning today, as mentioned by Sima Qian, and the presence of mercury would be incredibly deadly to anyone who entered the tomb without appropriate protection. 

Most importantly, however, is the fact that even now, technology is not advanced enough to deal with the sheer scale of the underground complex and the preservation of artifacts. 

The terracotta warriors were once brightly painted when they were first discovered, yet the exposure to the air and sunlight caused the paint to flake off immediately.

Until further technological advancements have been made, it is unlikely that archeologists will risk opening the tomb of the first emperor of China.