The excavation process of the tomb of the Nanyue King in the Western Han Dynasty

The city of Guangzhou was called Panyu in ancient times. The Xianggang in the west of Yuexiu Mountain outside the city is a small hillside that is not tall and shaped like a lying elephant. It has always been a scenic spot near the ancient city. At the earliest, it was connected with Yuexiu Mountain, with towering trees and gurgling streams, making it a beautiful place. During the Hongwu period of the Ming Dynasty, the three ancient cities of Panyu were merged into one, and the North City was expanded and extended to the north for more than 2,600 meters. During the Shunzhi period of the Qing Dynasty, this area became an important defensive location in the south. In order to resist foreign aggression, the military connected this area with the three forts in Baoji, Yongning, and Qiding in the north. The mountains and forests on the hills were cleared and built. Gongji Fort was used to protect the north city of Guangzhou. After the founding of New China, taking advantage of its strategic location, the People's Liberation Army stationed here, dug bunkers, and used this area as a military restricted area.

In June 1983, an engineering team was carrying out infrastructure construction in Xianggang Mountain. The hillside would be flattened by roaring excavators and replaced by an apartment building rising from the ground. Dozens of construction workers worked day and night to dig out 17 meters from the top of the mountain with an altitude of less than 50 meters. The project was progressing smoothly. Several ancient tombs were also excavated during the period, from the Han Dynasty, Jin Dynasty to the Ming Dynasty. It can be seen that this place is indeed a geomantic treasure. Guangzhou's cultural relics staff attach great importance to this and send working groups to investigate every time. However, these cemeteries are very small in scale, and most of them were visited by tomb robbers in the early years, leaving only empty tombs. As the excavation project progressed, archaeologists believed that it was impossible to still have tombs in such a deep layer of soil, so the project entered the normal construction stage.

But at noon one day later, after the excavator performed a round of rough digging, the workers began to remove the earth and stone and level the working surface. Suddenly, they found that the sand, gravel and soil layer had disappeared, replaced by They are huge, regular-shaped stone slabs with narrow gaps between them. It would be a bit unbelievable to say that it was artificially constructed. The workers did not think too much and used a T-shaped pick to pry to both sides along one of the gaps in the stone slabs. The gap gradually widened, revealing a deep, bottomless black hole. The viewers were talking a lot. Some said it was an air defense fortification dug by Lin Biao's troops. Some said it was an accidental coincidence of geological movements. Some even thought it was a trace left by an alien civilization. At this time, Deng Qinyou, the infrastructure section chief in charge of the construction site, happened to be passing by. Seeing the crowds of people, he stepped forward to take a look. It didn't matter at first glance. Based on his previous experience of digging out ancient tombs at construction sites and the archaeological knowledge he learned from cultural relics workers, he felt that the matter was not trivial, so he quickly reported it to the General Office of the Guangdong Provincial Government and contacted the Guangdong Provincial Cultural Relics Bureau. Huang Miaozhang, the duty officer. At that time, Deng Qinyou had no idea how well his move would protect the huge secret buried beneath the construction site.

After receiving the call, Huang Miaozhang rushed from the Cultural Relics Bureau with his colleagues. With a flashlight, he leaned over and looked inside. He saw a huge space inside the cave, rough stone walls, and a visible corner. There is also a huge bronze tripod. His heart suddenly tightened, and he could initially conclude that this was by no means an ordinary ancient tomb from the Jin Dynasty or Ming Dynasty, but a noble tomb from before the Han Dynasty. You know, no tombs before the Han Dynasty have ever been found in the entire Guangzhou area, and such a huge tomb is unprecedented. The matter was so important that Huang Miaozhang urgently contacted Mai Yinghao, director of the Guangzhou Cultural Relics Management Committee. This person is an experienced archaeologist and the director of the Guangzhou Museum. When he received the call, a thought flashed through his brain: Could it be that the tomb of the Yue King, which has been discussed divergently since ancient times, has appeared?

The Nanyue Kingdom was a feudal regime that ruled over the vast territory of Lingnan during the Western Han Dynasty. The founding king, Zhao Tuo, struggled for more than 70 years to create the great cause of the Nanyue Kingdom, which shocked the southern country. He died at the age of more than a hundred years old. In the last few decades of his life, he had been making careful arrangements for his afterlife. In order to prevent his tomb from being stolen after his death, he sent his ministers to dig dozens of suspected tombs in the vast mountains outside the capital Panyu. After Zhao Tuo's grandson Zhao Hu came to the throne, the first thing he did was to hold a secret and massive state funeral for him.

First, people were stationed in the mountains surrounding Panyu, and then four identical funeral teams held high flags and escorted identical coffins from four directions from the four gates of Panyu City to different burial sites. This unprecedented burial method really confused everyone's eyes. Coupled with the dozens of mysterious tombs left during Zhao Tuo's lifetime, no one knew where the great monarch was buried, let alone where the rich burial treasures were. Since then, the most legendary tomb mystery in Chinese history has been left.

In the following 2,000 years, the tomb of the King of Nanyue has always been one of the focuses of attention of civilian tomb robbers, and even experienced the unpleasant events of being searched by the whole country in some dynasties. In order to seek for the legendary huge burial treasure, Sun Quan, the king of Wu during the Three Kingdoms period, ordered General Lu Yu to lead 5,000 troops to search throughout the Lingnan area, aiming directly at the tomb of King Nanyue. However, after half a year with no results, Lu Yu led his elite soldiers to dig three feet into the mountains and fields, and only found the tomb of Zhao Yingqi, the great-grandson of the South Vietnamese King Zhao Tuo. Although the funerary objects were not enough to shock the world, they were presented to Sun Quan and the grave-digging farce ended hastily. Afterwards, tomb robbers from all over Lingnan swarmed out, searching for all kinds of clues, but ultimately returned without success.

In 1916, Lingnan farmers accidentally discovered an ancient Nanyue tomb while building a house in Guigang outside Guangzhou. Although the excavated grave goods were rich, experts determined that this was just an ordinary noble tomb. The real tombs of the South Vietnamese royal family were still hidden in the vast mountains. However, through this noble tomb, archaeologists determined that the tomb of the Nanyue King was not created out of thin air, and was indeed located in Lingnan. From then on, Guangzhou Huanghua University was established in 1931, and the Guangzhou Cultural Relics Management Committee was established in 1950. During this period, all archaeologists have always focused on the tombs of the South Vietnamese royal family.

Now that Mai Yinghao was feeling sad, he tried to calm down, because what he said on the phone was only a larger tomb that might belong to the Han Dynasty. The specific situation would not be known until he saw it with his own eyes. After Mai Yinghao rushed to the construction site, he looked through the gaps in the stone slabs with a flashlight and determined that it was a giant tomb from the Han Dynasty. However, it was still unclear who the owner of the tomb was and whether the tomb was stolen. For safety reasons, he arranged for personnel to be stationed, dismissed construction workers, and blocked news of the discovery of the cemetery. At nightfall, Mai Yinghao asked the thin Huang Miaozhang to enter the tomb to investigate. After entering the gloomy and cold underground palace through the gap between the stone slabs, Huang Miaozhang was immediately immersed in the wonder brought by the scene in front of him, and his original fear disappeared. Countless bronze artifacts and ancient jade ornaments shine brightly under the flashlight, especially the well-preserved bronze chimes. It is obvious that not only has no tomb robbers visited this place, but it is also undoubtedly preserved. The intact tombs of the royal family of the Han Dynasty.

The survey results convinced Mai Yinghao that this was most likely the tomb of the South Vietnamese royal family. The archaeological holy site that he had been searching for for decades was about to appear before his eyes. He suppressed his excitement and reported the relevant findings to the leaders of the Guangdong Provincial Government. The leaders attached great importance to it, and an extraordinary telegram was quickly sent to the State Administration of Cultural Heritage of China: "A large painted tomb with a stone chamber was found in Xianggang, Guangzhou. The tomb is in good condition and has extremely rich burial objects. Preliminary inference is that the owner of the tomb is likely to be the King of Nanyue or his family. Member." Mr. Xia Nai, director of the Institute of Archeology of the Chinese Academy of Sciences, urgently summoned the deputy director of the Guangzhou Municipal Culture Bureau and the director of the Guangzhou Museum to report to Beijing. After hearing the details, he was also very excited, thinking that the tomb had been discovered, and from the perspective of protecting it from being stolen, this matter must be resolved properly as soon as possible. Subsequently, the State Council approved the excavation request, and a secret that had been sealed for more than 2,000 years was solved by such a chance.

At 9 a.m. on August 25, 1983, a unique ribbon-cutting event was held as scheduled at the Xianggang construction site. Although all local provincial and municipal government leaders were present, there were no onlookers or people from all walks of life. According to the reporter's interview, Huang Zhanyue, deputy leader of the Xianggang Archaeological Team, gave an order to officially start the excavation of the ancient tomb.

The archaeological team built a huge shed above the excavation site to prevent the tomb from being exposed to the sun or rain during the excavation.

At the same time, grid borehole survey sampling was carried out over a large area to avoid improper excavation of the main tomb and damage to possible accompanying burial pits. However, the results of the investigation are shocking. The entire Xianggang Mountain is owned by a single tomb. In other words, this tomb was hollowed out and built using the mountain as a mausoleum. With such a large scale, its owner must be the royal family. .

During the process of cleaning the tomb passage, the team members found that the anti-theft measures here were extremely effective. The entire tomb passage was filled with huge rocks, the heaviest of which weighed 2 tons. Only large cranes could be used to continue the cleaning work. After preliminary measurements, the tomb passage is in the shape of a rectangular slope, about 10.5 meters long, 2.5 meters wide, and 3.2 meters deep. About 4 meters in front of the tomb chamber, the tomb passage begins to turn into a vertical pit, in which a large number of bronzes, pottery and other burial objects are accumulated. The product was found, and a stamp with the words "Channgle Palace Ware" was found. Changle Palace was the residence of the Empress Dowager during the Western Han Dynasty. If it were not the king of Nanyue who claimed the title of emperor, it would be impossible and courageous for anyone else to use this word. At the same time, the team members also discovered two buried victims. All signs clearly pointed out that the owner of the tomb had an extremely noble background.

At the end of the tomb passage are two huge stone doors. After more than 2,000 years of erosion, the door shafts have broken and are in danger of collapsing at any time. The archaeological team also used a crane to lift the huge stone door and forehead stone from the tomb. After opening the tomb door, the tomb chamber filled with exquisite portraits is finally revealed in front of people. The black and red moire patterns on the four walls are majestic, elegant and unrestrained, as if telling the story of the tomb owner's all-powerful life. At the same time, in the front room of the underground palace, the archaeological team discovered precious cultural relics such as a huge copper tripod, jade pendant, jade bi, two iron knives and a "Jingxiang Order Seal". However, the number of these cultural relics is mediocre compared with those later discovered in the ear chamber on the east side of the tomb.

The east side auricle is about .2 meters long, 1.7 meters wide and 1.8 meters high. It is completely dug out from the rock structure inside the elephant hill. In addition to the dazzling array of gold, silver, jade, In addition to exquisite products such as stone, ivory, lacquered wood, and pottery, the most precious items are the large number and wide variety of bronze and stone musical instruments. Among them, there are two sets of chime bells cast, namely Yong bell and Niu bell. There are 5 pieces in a set of Yong bells and 14 pieces in a set of button bells. They have fine workmanship, precise music and melodious sound. There are also two sets of stone chimes arranged near the chimes, arranged from large to small, with a total of 18 pieces. In addition, there are several bronze harps, bronze harps, and two lacquered xylophones. Such a huge group of musical instruments and such a complete orchestra arrangement are very neatly arranged even today. In fact, as early as the Western Zhou Dynasty, in order to strengthen their rule, the emperors implemented the policy of "conferring princes with the same surname", and the royal family and nobles were enfeoffed in various places. On the basis of "dividing states and building countries", Zhou Gongdan systematically established a set of "rituals and music" system. According to the idea that "music" is subordinate to "ritual", "ritual" is used to distinguish the distant and distant clans, and at the same time, "music" is used to integrate the hierarchical order of "ritual". The two complement each other and show the power level through "ritual and music". The dance team consists of eight people in a row, which is called a Yi. According to the "Book of Rites", the emperor's dance team uses eight Yi, the princes six, the princes four, and the scholars two. In this way, different classes have different numbers of people in the dance team, which greatly promotes the popularization and consolidation of feudal hierarchical ideas.