Grave robbers in Luoyang ancient and modern times: Tomb robbers in the Ming Dynasty had weapons and special skills, and their noses could smell out whether there were gold treasures in the ground.
Tomb robbers in the past in Luoyang
The author of this article is Ni Fangliu
Which place has been visited most by tomb robbers in ancient and modern times? There is no doubt that it is Mangshan in Luoyang, Henan. In fact, not only Mang Mountain, but also the entire surrounding area of Luoyang City, tomb robbing activities were quite active in the past.
There are too many underground tombs in Luoyang and they are too rich.
At first glance, there were graves everywhere on the mountain, large and small, densely packed. From tens of meters underground to several meters underground, there are tombs of different periods in different soil layers. The further forward, the deeper the tombs are.
With so many graves, how many burial objects should there be! The tomb robbers will naturally not let it go.
The earliest tomb robbing trend in Mangshan occurred in the late Eastern Han Dynasty.
It is the autumn of troubled times, wars are breaking out, the world is desolate, and people may eat each other. The warlords who were short of pay and the hungry people who were going crazy with hunger picked up shovels and went up the mountain to dig graves.
The most outstanding tomb robber among them is Dong Zhuo.
"Book of the Later Han: Chronicles of Emperor Xiaoxian" records that in April of the sixth year of Zhongping (AD 189), Emperor Ling of the Han Dynasty Liu Hong died. Four months later in August, Dong Zhuo led his troops into Luoyang and took charge of the government. . In September, the Young Emperor was deposed, replaced by Liu Xie (Emperor Xian), and Queen He was killed... which made people panic. After treating the living, Dong Zhuo did not let go of the dead. Taking advantage of the chaos of the funeral, he opened the Wenling Mausoleum of Han Ling Emperor who had just been buried and stole the buried treasures.
Emperor Ling of the Han Dynasty had been in power for more than 20 years. Although the national power was declining at that time, there would be no shortage of funerary objects, which all benefited Dong Zhuo.
After this incident came out, the government and the public were shocked, and people and gods were outraged. Even Cao Cao, the later tomb robber, couldn't help it and raised troops to rebel against Zhuo.
But Dong Zhuo was not afraid at all and asked Emperor Xian of the Han Dynasty to move the capital to Chang'an. He stayed in Luoyang and sent people to dig up all the tombs of the emperors in Luoyang. This incident is recorded in the "Book of the Later Han Dynasty: The Biography of Dong Zhuo": "(Dong Zhuo) also asked Lu Bu to visit the tombs of the emperors and the duke's tombs."
It is worth mentioning that the tombs on the ground of Luoyang were stolen. After the imperial mausoleum was named a tomb, Dong Zhuo arrived in Chang'an and dug up the imperial mausoleum there. Dong Zhuo's pioneer in tomb robbing was Lü Bu. Ancient and modern tomb robbing novels have written about Lü Bu's tomb robbing story. It is not groundless, but is based on historical facts and has a solid record.
It was so tragic that the tombs in Mangshan, Luoyang were stolen! Zhang Zai of the Jin Dynasty said in his "Seven Sorrow Poems": "After the death of the Ji Dynasty, chaos broke out, and thieves and thieves were like jackals and tigers. After destroying the soil for a while, a secluded house was opened. The pearls were separated from the jade body, and the treasures were found plagiarized. The garden bed turned into a ruin. . Zhou Yong Wuyi blocked..."
By the end of the Western Jin Dynasty, during the Wuhu period of chaos in China, the trend of tomb robbing in Luoyang revived.
At that time, the three capitals of Hanoi, Hedong and Henan, centered on Luoyang, were all occupied by the Hu people. The Sima family did not even care about their ancestral graves, fled Jiangzuo, settled in the southeast, and established the Eastern Jin Dynasty.
After Liu Cong, Shi Le, Liu Yao and other barbarians took over the Central Plains one after another, they were more ruthless than Dong Zhuo.
According to the "Book of Jin·Biography of Wang Mi", Liu Yao, Wang Mi and others "trapped the palace city, went to the front hall of Taiji, and plundered the army. Emperor You went to Duanmen, forced and humiliated Queen Yang, and killed Prince Quan, excavating the tomb..."
Shi Le and Shi Jilong were the most greedy. They plundered "incalculable amounts of gold, silk, pearls, jade and foreign rare and exotic goods", but he was still not satisfied. "The emperors and sages of the past dynasties It’s hard to find treasures without excavation of tombs.”
Therefore, the imperial tombs of the Han, Wei, and Jin dynasties in Luoyang are difficult to discover archaeologically today. I can't confirm it, but the root cause is here.
After that, Luoyang did not stop, and the tomb robbing activities on the ground continued to decrease - mainly among the private sector.
Don’t think that civilian tomb robbers will show mercy, the damage is just as serious. Warlords are not professional in tomb robbing, so they can still leave some things behind. For example, Dong Zhuo robbed the tombs of emperors of the Eastern Han Dynasty. Since it was wartime and the tombs were robbed in a hurry, it was impossible to rob the tombs very cleanly and a lot of things would be left behind.
The same cannot be said for private tomb robbing. These people know the situation better and are more professional - they are better at robbing!
Wang Shixing of the Ming Dynasty recorded the situation of tomb robberies in Luoyang in that year in his "Guangzhi Yi": "Luoyang has deep water and soil, and the burials are four to five feet long but cannot reach the spring. Even if the burial is like this, thieves can still sniff it with an iron cone, and smell the gas of gold, silver, copper, and iron."
Everyone knows that the tomb robbers in Luoyang during the Republic of China were powerful, and they also invented the Luoyang shovel. After reading Wang Shixing’s account, I found that the tomb robbers in Luoyang during the Ming Dynasty were not inferior at all, and felt even more powerful, far better than modern tomb robbers who use expanding explosives. Author:
First, possess a tomb robbing weapon.
The iron awl used by tomb robbers at that time was probably specially invented for tomb robberies. The function of this thing is similar to the probe used in modern archaeology.
He also possesses tomb robbing skills.
If you smell the earthy atmosphere with your nose, you can know whether there are precious gold treasures underneath and what kind of funerary objects there are. These tomb robbers are very ambitious. If they don’t have yellow and white goods like gold and silver, they won’t look down on them at all.
At that time, the local government in Luoyang, just like now, prohibited the excavation of imperial tombs. In fact, it was impossible to prohibit or control it.
Or when netizens see this, they will sigh for the ancient tomb robbing in Luoyang. Such precious non-renewable human cultural heritage was stolen and destroyed. If you know about tomb robbing during the Republic of China, you will feel that it was not ancient times that brought devastating damage to Luoyang tombs. In the Republic of China, the tombs of the Eastern Zhou Dynasty that escaped ancient tomb robbers did not escape the shovels of tomb robbers in the Republic of China.
In the twelfth lunar month of the fifteenth year of the Republic of China (1926), I heard that there was a tomb of King Zhou Ling on Zhoushan Mountain near Sunqitun Village in the western suburbs of Luoyang. The leader of the local Red Spear Association led more than 100 people to dig up several pieces of it like crazy. In ten days, thirty or forty Eastern Zhou bronze vessels were unearthed.
Local antique dealer Wu Guijie once saw these bronzes with his own eyes: "The most prominent thing inside is a bronze figure seven or eight inches tall, which is the same size as the sacrificial plate with a chain. The larger one is one foot in diameter." Four or five, the size is about a foot, and the patterns are quite neat."
Stolen from the tomb of the Eastern Zhou Dynasty. , the most famous one is the Eastern Zhou Tomb located in Jincun, the eastern suburb of Luoyang.
Jincun is located at the southern foot of Mang Mountain, right in the area of Zhou royal tombs and noble tombs. From 1929 to 1933, a number of large tombs were stolen here. How crazy were the tomb robbers at that time? They carried their own guns and weapons when robbing tombs and used force to excavate them. If they didn't have enough funds, they raised funds to rob the tombs.
Wang Guangqing, who once served as the president of the National Henan University, described what he saw and heard in his article "An Ancient Visit to Luoyang": "In the 18th year of the Republic of China, a large number of ancient relics were excavated from Dongcheng, accounting for the amount of silver and jade. Dozens of pieces, including copper, bamboo, and wood... I have seen Zhang Zimeijun's photo, which is in the shape of a bull's head and is inlaid with silver wire. This vessel was sold for 170,000 to 180,000 yuan, which greatly benefited from the subsequent excavations. As of the 22nd year of the Republic of China, antiquities were unearthed in the 1950s and 1990s and were sold for half a million yuan... People from Luoyang village armed themselves with guns and raised funds for excavations."
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There are three wealthy people in Jincun, namely Zhang Zimei, Zhang Xiqing, and Wang Daozhong. There was a saying in the village at that time: "Jincun Street, the three tallest men, Zimei, Xiqing, Wangdao, Zhongjin." How did they get rich? Just by robbing tombs and selling cultural relics.
There are also three powerful figures in Jincun, namely Zhang Lantang, Zhang Shifu and Ma Jiazi, known as the "Three Jiashi of Jincun Street". "Jiashi" is a dialect and refers to powerful people. They were robbing tombs and cheating, and they all made a fortune.
How rich can you be? For example, Ma Jiazi was a heavy smoker. The plate he used to wipe his opium was not paper but banknotes. He casually took out a 5 yuan or 10 yuan bill...