How big is the tomb of Qin Shihuang? Is it a mountain?
The Mausoleum of Qin Shi Huang is the largest, most unique and rich in connotation among the world's imperial mausoleums. It took Qin Shi Huang 36 years to build this mausoleum and invested more than 700,000 manpower. Sometimes the number of people even There will be nearly 800,000 people, and the manpower invested is equivalent to 8 times that of the largest existing pyramid in the world, the Pyramid of Khufu. Excluding the burial pits of the imperial mausoleum, the underground palace cemetery of Qin Shihuang's mausoleum alone covers an area of nearly 260,000 square meters, which is 78 times the size of the Forbidden City.
It is precisely because of the ingenious craftsmanship and investment regardless of cost that the seal of Qin Shi Huang’s Mausoleum is as high as 115 meters (later eroded and geological evolution, and now only 43 meters high), so that some people think that Qin Shi Huang’s Mausoleum is It's a hill.
▲The Mausoleum of the First Emperor of Qin
The Mausoleum of the First Emperor of Qin was built on the alluvial fan of the river to the north of Lishan Mountain and is adjacent to the Weishui River in the north. It is an excellent Feng Shui treasure land. The mausoleum is divided into the surface part and the underground palace part. The surface part is the Qin Mausoleum seal. Its shape is approximately square, with a flat top, and the surrounding slopes are trapezoidal, so this surface makes many people mistakenly think of it as a hill. In fact, the underground palace is the core area of his tomb.
The underground palace is divided into two parts: the cemetery area and the burial area. Under the surface seal of the imperial mausoleum is the cemetery area of the underground palace. The underground palace cemetery area is divided into four parts from the inside to the outside, namely the palace city, the inner city, the outer city, and the four parts outside the outer city. They are separated by two inner and outer city walls, and the whole is in the shape of a back. According to different social functions, the concentration of buried treasures in these four parts is also different, and the overall density gradually decreases from the inside to the outside.
In order to protect these cemetery areas, there are three springs in the underground palace. If someone steals, the people will follow the underground palace and be flooded. In addition, there are rivers and seas formed by mercury, machine arrows and crossbows and other murderous weapons. . As for the burial pits, they are used to place the terracotta warriors and horses similar to Qin Shihuang's and to bury "members of social organizations" such as concubines, eunuchs and maids.
▲The back-shaped cemetery area
The underground palace is located in the palace of Qin Shihuang. According to Li Daoyuan's "Shui Jing Zhu", there are astronomical stars painted on the roof. The image uses dazzling night pearls to form the sun, moon and stars, which complement each other. Under the coffin, there are three mountains and five mountains similar to the terrain of our country, and the rivers and seas in between are filled with mercury, instilling the spirit. Around the shrubs, countless statues of civil and military officials stood humbly in front of the coffin of the First Emperor.
According to "Historical Records", this magnificent imperial mausoleum was built for a total of 39 years and was divided into three stages.
The first stage is for King Qin to conquer Liuhe and dominate the world. Since it was at this stage that the Qin State spent a lot of its financial resources on fighting wars, only the general framework of the tomb was designed, and the construction progress was very slow. But even so, it still took a full 26 years.
The second stage is the 9 years after Qin Shihuang unified the world. Due to the unification of the country and the efficient integration and allocation of resources, the construction progress during this period progressed by leaps and bounds.
The third stage was 4 years after the death of Qin Shihuang. This time coincided with the uprising of Chen Sheng and Wu Guang. The country's political situation was unstable and financial resources were insufficient, so it could only be ended hastily.
▲Longitudinal section of Qin Mausoleum
Unfortunately, in the first year of Qin Prince Ying's reign, Qin Shihuang's Mausoleum met with disaster not long after its completion. After Xiang Yu entered the Pass, he led his 300,000 troops to destroy Qin Shihuang's mausoleum and looted all the buildings on the surface of the emperor's mausoleum. But he did not stop there, and also excavated parts of the underground palace. The reason why the Terracotta Warriors and Horses Pit of Qin Shihuang's Mausoleum has been rediscovered today is precisely because Xiang Yu destroyed the burial area of the underground palace. As for the cemetery area, it was thanks to the numerous underground palace mechanisms that it caused many casualties to the Chu army and was able to be saved.
Later during the Han Dynasty, in order to appease the original nobles of the seven countries, Liu Bang sent people to guard the mausoleum of their ancestors, and the mausoleum of Qin Shihuang was protected by twenty families of mausoleum guardians. However, because Qin Shihuang's mausoleum is so famous, there will be troops plundering it in troubled times, so these twenty families of mausoleum guardians are not very useful. During the Xinmang regime, the Red Eyebrow Army visited once. During the Wei and Jin Dynasties, the stone tigers of Later Zhao also robbed the Qin Mausoleum. During the Huangchao period in the late Tang Dynasty, the Mausoleum of Qin Shihuang once again suffered large-scale damage.
Thus, after thousands of years of war, the surface buildings in the Qinling Mountains have long ceased to exist, and the burial areas have been completely destroyed. Fortunately, the underground palace cemetery has not been destroyed due to its complex structure. What we can see on its surface is nothing more than a mound of earth.