Mystery: Why couldn’t 400,000 people dig Wu Zetian’s tomb?
If the emperor's tomb is the most difficult to dig in the world, then it is undoubtedly Wu Zetian's "Ten Thousand Years Guard" Ganling. Her mausoleum was split open by swords from the Cold Weapon Age and bombarded by machine guns and heavy artillery from the Hot Weapon Age. In more than 1,200 years, there were as many as 17 tomb robbers, the largest of which numbered 400,000 people. The tomb robbers accounted for almost half of Liangshan, where the tomb robbers were located.
However, to this day, it still does not abandon or give up. Like Xu Sanduo, it dutifully protects the remains of its owner Wu Zetian and her husband Li Zhi. We can't help but wonder, the tomb of Emperor Wu of the Han Dynasty was emptied, the Zhaoling Mausoleum of Emperor Taizong of the Tang Dynasty was swept away, and Emperor Kangxi couldn't even collect the bones. Why was only Wu Canzetian’s Qianling mausoleum spared?
This matter has to start with the construction of Ganling. The mausoleum is located on Liangshan Mountain, 6 kilometers north of Gan County, Shaanxi Province, and 76 kilometers away from the ancient city of Xi'an. Built in 684 AD, the project took 23 years to be basically completed. Liangshan is a naturally formed limestone mountain with three towering peaks. The north peak is the highest, with an altitude of 1047.3 meters. The two southern peaks are lower and face each other from east to west. At that time, the masses called it "Tit Mountain".
Looking from the east to west of Ganling Mountain, Liangshan looks like the body of a woman lying on her back, with the north peak as the head and the two southern peaks as the chest. People often say it is a wonderful symbol of Empress Wu Zetian. Feng shui masters of the Tang Dynasty believed that Liangshan was beneficial to Xiao San. Therefore, Wu Zetian chose Liangshan as her husband, Tang Gaozong and her "Longevity Domain" a hundred years later.
After the death of Emperor Gaozong of the Tang Dynasty, Wu Zetian ordered Yuan Tiangang and Li Li, famous warlocks in both the government and the public at that time, to choose a good place for the emperor. The two traveled throughout Kyushu respectively, and when they came back, they told each other that they had chosen Liangshan in Hao County. Wu Zetian sent envoys to inspect. When he reached the top of Liangshan Mountain, Yuan Tiangang said that he had buried a copper coin here, and Li said that he had ordered a nail here. After digging the ground, Li's nails were driven into the copper square holes buried by Yuan. Everyone present clapped their hands in surprise. Therefore, Wu Zetian chose the location of her mausoleum in Liangshan, which is now Ganling. In terms of Feng Shui alone, Qianling Mausoleum surpasses all the tombs of the Tang Dynasty.
Such rich treasures make Ganling like pollen, attracting professional tomb robbers, government officials, bandits, warlords, and even peasant rebels, who come to dig with shovels and hoes. From the moment Wu Zetian lay in Ganling, Liangshan never stopped. Huang Chao, the leader of the rebel army in the late Tang Dynasty, was the first to arrive at Ganling. Among the leaders of the peasant uprising armies in the past dynasties, his reactionary degree was second only to Zhang in the late Ming Dynasty.
After the salt merchants led an army of 600,000 into Chang'an, they first burned, killed, looted, and completely looted everything. After becoming addicted to banditry, I suddenly found myself with nothing to do. At this time, someone told him something. There are many gravels buried in the loess on the west side of Liangshan Mountain. This news hints to Huang Chao that the entrance to Ganling, the richest tomb in the Tang Dynasty, is likely to be on the west side of Liangshan, and the rubble is likely to be the remaining raw materials after Ganling was built. Huang Chao was so happy that he immediately mobilized 400,000 soldiers and ran to the west side of Liangshan to start digging.
These people are farmers and are very skilled in the use of shovels. Soon, they leveled half of Liangshan, leaving a 40-meter-deep "Huangchao Valley". However, it was as if Ganling had no entrance at all. Later, the Tang army gathered to launch a counterattack against Chang'an, but Huang Chao had no choice but to escape empty-handed.
Huang Chao, who claimed to be a scholar, was stupid enough to know that Ganling faced south. The Tang Dynasty deliberately buried the rubble generated by the construction more than 300 meters away from the entrance of the tomb passage. In other words, he dug in the wrong direction. Therefore, an uneducated person will never become a nouveau riche, because money or soldiers are not resources that benefit one party, but poison that wastes people's wealth and harms the world.
The second person who extended a sinful hand to Ganling was our Yaozhou envoy Tao Wen in the Five Dynasties. He seemed to be born to cause trouble for the tomb of Emperor Li Tang. Seventeen Tang tombs have been excavated before Ganling, and only Ganling remains. But his ideals were shattered here. Huang Li Kechao once asked tens of thousands of people to dig Ganling in broad daylight. Unexpectedly, they were hit by wind and rain three times when they went up the mountain. The people evacuated and the weather cleared up immediately. Tao Wen really didn't understand what was going on, but he didn't keep digging, so he gave up the idea. Ling escaped the second robbery at this time.
The most dangerous thing is the third time. This time, what was sent was not 400,000 troops, but a modern integrated division. The tools for tomb robbing are no longer hoes and shovels, but machine guns and cannons that cut stones like vegetables. The mastermind was Sun Lianzhong, a Kuomintang general during the Republic of China.
He led his men to imitate Sun Dianying in bombing the tombs of Cixi and Qianlong, buried pots for cooking, and camped on Liangshan Mountain under the guise of military exercises. Black powder destroyed the third level of the tomb passage and erected stone bars. As he was about to enter, a plume of smoke suddenly appeared and spiraled up, turning into a tornado. Suddenly, it gets dark and rocks and sand fly. Seven Shanxi soldiers were the first to bear the brunt and died immediately of vomiting blood. No one else dared to go any further and let out a loud cry. It is said that there were very few survivors of General Sun's regiment. The locals said, "Because Wu Zetian is from Shanxi, she hates people from her hometown digging her grave, so those seven Shanxi soldiers will definitely die." In this way, Gan Ling finally dodged the last bullet.
After the founding of the People's Republic of China, by chance, several farmers discovered the tomb passage in Ganling. In 1960, Shaanxi Province established the Ganling Excavation Committee and began to excavate the tomb passages of the Ganling Underground Palace on April 3. Excavations have shown that the tomb passage of the Ganling Underground Palace is located halfway up the mountain southeast of the main peak of Liangshan Mountain and consists of two parts: a trench and a cave. The trench is 17 meters deep and is completely filled with stone strips 1.25 meters long and 0.4 to 0.6 meters wide. The tomb passage is 63.1 meters long, wide from the south and narrow from the north, with an average width of 3.9 meters.
The stones are stacked along the slope from south to north, with a total of 39 layers, 410 exposed planes, and about 8,000 stones in the 39 layers. The stone is fixed with a dovetail-shaped thin-waisted iron bolt plate, and the upper and lower holes are pierced with iron bars. Molten tin and iron juice is poured into it to blend with the stone bars. The excavation situation is consistent with the record in the Biography of Yan Shansi in the old Tang Dynasty: "The gate of Xuanque in Ganling was blocked with stones and the spaces between the stones were solidified with cast iron." In addition, archaeologists found no signs of robbery or disturbance around Lingshan, proving that Ganling is the only tomb of a Tang Dynasty emperor that has not been stolen.
Wu Zetian is a person who is good at using time to defeat everything. She entered the palace at the age of 14 and served as queen for 18 years and then emperor for 35 years. After her death, it took 1,200 years to prove the sturdiness and charm of her tomb. Even before Mr. Guo Moruo passed away, he still remembered the central government's approval of the excavation of Ganling. It can be said that Wu Ze conquered the world before her birth and conquered history after her death.