Let’s travel to China, where we have an appointment with an emperor and his army in death

Discover all the intricacies that were once lost to us and have since been re-found. There are still many mysteries surrounding the First Emperor of Qin and the Terracotta Army

The discovery

Back in the day, so, March 1974, a couple of peasants in rural China we’re just doing their thing. At the time the Shaanzi province was experiencing a drought, and so the peasants were attempting to dig a well for that all important life giving liquid. As they were digging, they happened upon a human figure made of clay. What an odd thing to find, clay in the shape of a man, and life-sized too, what sorcery?

There was plenty of sorcery left to discover, because it soon became apparent that the clay figure was not hanging out solo. He was just the first of many that would be uncovered in the years and decades to come.

What the peasants had discovered was a terracotta warrior. The first of many. A year of excavation followed, the archaeological team finding some 6000 terracotta warriors, some accompanied with terracotta horses. This first batch of warriors that were found were named Pit 1.

Moving forward a couple of years, we find ourselves in 1976, and two other pits have been found, a mere 20 metres away from the first, naturally these were called Pit 2 and Pit 3.

Naturally all these warriors were life-sized, like the first and better yet, they even carried real weapons made of bronze. Ever ready for battle they stand in rows and lines along with war chariots, cavalrymen, infantrymen and all the others that make up a working army.

Of course this amazing discovery would raise eyebrows and interests. Chinese and international archaeologists and historians couldn’t get enough. A whole army, buried underground. Labelled as

One of the greatest archaeological discoveries of the 20th century

The Terracotta Army hold a very special place in the heart of all people from China. Naturally there was a very enticing story behind this magnificent display of wealth and power.

The Qin Dynasty

Back in the BC’s, along came a lad that essentially combined all the different warring states of China into one big country. Some believe this first emperor to have been a warmonger who cared for little else than conquering. And while that may have been correct, everyone is multifaceted, even first emperors.

Back when Ying Zheng was born, China was a divided continent. His father’s kingdom was well known for its horsemen, and much like our Game of Thrones friends, were seen as practically savage by their less horse dependent rivals.

Ying Zheng’s father is believed to have died in 246 BC, and the young boy, barely 13 at the time, was all of a sudden the leader of this kingdom.

Throughout China, Confucianism had gained traction and wasn’t doing too badly, believing in an administration that governed like a family, with respect. But Ying Zheng had other ideas, he wanted to combine all the warring states of China, and in order to do that, doctrines and laws would need to be introduced.

The biggest thing that was introduced by the new leader? Standardisation. A symbol of an intelligent and sophisticated society. The biggest introduction the young leader had implemented was standardised weights and measures and a uniform writing script for all the states under his control. Meaning that the vast amount of dialects spoken would no longer cause an issue, with everyone speaking the same language, understandability and trade in general would skyrocket. He did not stop there, infrastructure was next, with irrigation canals and storage granaries added all over the place.

Through hard work and determination, things were starting to come together. By 221 BC, the seven warring states had been merged into one nation, under one Emperor, stretching from Sichuan in the west all the way through to along the East China Sea.

Now that he had everything under control, Ying Zheng did a classic rebrand. He renamed himself Qin Shi Huangdi, the First Emperor of Qin.

But he didn’t stop there, he invested in more infrastructure. A road network in excess of 6400 km stretched across the empire, there was even a central lane reserved for imperial travel.

And the base of the Great Wall started to be constructed with rubble found along the way. These fortifications would be rebuilt in the 15th century with stone and brick by the Ming Dynasty though, so we won’t go too much into that.

Every empire needs a capital, and the First Emperor’s capital was Xianyang. Basically a metropolis that contained a supposed 270 palaces. Sadly not too much remains of this magnificent city, reportedly only one foundation survives.

While all this nation building was happening. The Emperor didn’t forget about the inevitable future. And so started to plan for his eventual demise, with the construction of a tomb complex. Not just a tomb, but a tomb complex.

It’s reported that 720 000 workers worked on the project. And warriors protecting the tomb itself isn’t uncommon, other ancient Chinese rulers have had two or three standing as guards outside their tombs. But Huangdi was not going to be outdone and felt that an entire army would suffice against any attack he may experience in the afterlife.

While Huangdi was clearly prepared for the end, he kinda hoped he could avoid it all together, and so went on that most holy of quests, the quest for eternal life.

The stories tell us that ancient Chinese alchemists told the Emperor of these magical herbs, that could only be found on the Islands of the Immortals that were very conveniently located out in the East China Sea. So… Japan.

Over the years, Huangdi sent emissaries and alchemists to retrieve the herbs, but out of all of them only one alchemist every came back. This bloke told the tale of a giant fish that guarded these mysterious islands. So the Emperor decided that if you want something done right, do it yourself and he set off on the search. Supposedly he was extremely skilled with a crossbrow, because he managed to kill the guard fish. But instead of finding the elixir of life, he found a curse. The Emperor got sick, really sick.

As 210 BC came around, and the 49-year-old first Emperor of China lay dying, he decreed that his eldest son, estranged at the time, would be his successor. But this angered some. Zhao Gao, a royal counsellor to the emperor believed that he put in way more hard work than that pesky boy did, and felt that he could run the country just as well, if only he had a puppet that would do everything he said.

So, Zhao Gao set about concealing the fact that the emperor had died. The way he did this is something out of a fairy story, but as the party travelled back from their quest, Zhao Gao allowed a cargo of salted fish to travel with them, you know, in an attempt to mask the smell of decomposing flesh.

Even though, this would never work, surprisingly it did for Zhao Gao, and when they returned to Xianyang, he managed to get Ying Huhai, a younger, weaker minded son of Huangdi to be Emperor. The ultimate puppet.

But, as it turned out, Zhao Gao, wasn’t actually that great at running a vast country, and the whole place descended into a civil war. The young second emperor sadly committed suicide and Zhao Gao only survived him by a short time before being killed himself.

The rebel forces that had risen up in this time of turbulence came together to form a new dynasty, and in 206 BC the Han Dynasty was born. Sadly the Qin Dynasty had outlived its Emperor by only four years.

BUT all was not lost. That very same year, the construction of the emperor’s tomb was completed at last.

Archaeologists are pretty certain that the Qin Dynasty had collapsed, purely by the extensive damage to the terracotta army. It appears that as order broke down, the pits were raided, taking the very real weapons that were meant to be held by the clay guard soldiers. Fires were also set, as can be seen by the weakened supports for the ceilings that just couldn’t handle the weight. Charring has also been discovered on some of the walls.

Interestingly, Chen Shen, the curator of a Terracotta Warriors show that featured in New York, notes that historical records are suspiciously silent about the clay army.

A Han Dynasty historian that lived about a century after the Qin Dynasty, doesn’t actually say one word about the warriors, despite talking about the Emperor’s tomb. And this bloke, Sima Qian, pretty much wrote the history of China in his ‘Shiji’, which covers 3000 years of Chinese history.

In his book The Warrior Emperor and China’s Terracotta Army, Shen reckons he knows why Sima Qian was silent on the warriors:

Because the historian served an emperor whose ancestors overthrew the First Emperor’s brief dynasty, he had to be conscious of presenting the past in a way that would not distress his ruler with unflattering comparisons.

The tomb itself covers an area of 56 square kilometres, and is believed to be one of the imperial tombs with the richest burial objects in Chinese history.

The Tomb

The tomb of the emperor itself is about a kilometre away from the museum that’s been built for the warriors. The tomb is under this massive hill. But it hasn’t been excavated, mainly to preserve what’s been buried, but also because of what’s reported to be buried with him.

Supposedly, there are all sorts of riches buried in the tomb with the emperor, and booby traps to stop anyone from taking stuff back out. There is also reports of rivers of mercury, making the place just a little bit poisonous. In fact, soil analysis of the hill have shown unusually high levels of mercury, so it’s not just a story.

Here’s what Sima Qian says about the place in his Shiji:

More than 700 000 convict labourers from the world were sent there… [Shi Huangdi] ordered artisans to make crossbows triggered by mechanisms. Anyone passing before them would be shot immediately. They used mercury to recreate rivers, the [Yellow and Yangtze], and the great seas, where in the mercury was circulated mechanically. On the ceiling were celestial bodies and on the ground geographical features.

Very similar to Pompeii and Herculaneum, the tomb has been left untouched because the technology simply cannot guarantee that what is uncovered will continue to be preserved. Here’s Wu Yongqi, the director of the Museum of the Terracotta Army, telling us how it is:

I don’t think we have good scientific techniques to protect what we find in the underground palace. Especially if we find paper, silk or textiles from plants or animals; it would be very bad if they have been kept in a balanced condition for 2000 years, but suddenly they would vanish in a very short time… I have a dream that one day science can develop so that we can tell what is here without disturbing the emperor…

Wu Yongqi is also very aware of the impact this figure has on Chinese culture and Chinese heritage, and the role he played in modern China:

For all Chinese people, he is our ancestor, and for what he did for China, we cannot unearth his tomb just because archaeologists or people doing tourism want to know what is buried there.

This view of preservation over all else is an interesting view, one that I think more archaeologists should consider. With only approximately 2% of the tomb excavated, hopefully one day soon, we do have the technology that allows us to learn about what is buried without digging it up. And more and more it seems we may just be getting closer to that day.

Looking back at the Terracotta warriors. It’s become clear that it wasn’t just soldiers that were created, but practically the entire emperors court. As well as the soldiers, acrobats have also been unearthed, even recreations of animals, it’s quite extraordinary.

We find the underground pits are an imitation of the real organisation in the Qin Dynasty.

That’s Duan Qingbo, the head of one of the excavation teams.

People thought when the emperor died, he took just a lot of pottery army soldiers with him. Now they realise he took a whole political system with him.

Imagine that, not just an army to protect you in the afterlife and, if I daresay, help you conquer the afterlife, but also advisors, and entertainment.

Now, in order to create so many of these figures in a timely fashion. There’s a couple of theories on how the emperor went about it, but the generally agreed one is a system of mass production.

Very similar to assembly lines in the manufacture of cars today, the process of creating a terracotta warrior was broken down into parts. The head, arms, legs and torso were created separately and then brought together to be assembled.

They even believe that the arms and head were created using moulds, so that the general shape would be consistent, with soft clay added to the surface later down the line to give them their unique looks in their faces and hairdos.

Fired in kilns, once they were put together and assembled, painters would come in and paint them these brilliant colours. It’s such a shame that colour is the first thing to go, even looking at the ancient Greek and Roman Worlds, imagine how colourful our memories would be if only the colour had lasted.

With so many artisans working on every aspect of the tomb, each warrior was stamped with the maker’s seal, so that if mistakes were made they could be tracked to who made them. Now, I’m not sure what the punishment would have been, if there had been one at all. But the ingenuity of it all is quite staggering. Now let’s not forget, this is all happening in the BC’s, as in, proper ancient times. No 15th century nonsense, this is like thousands of years before that. Just astounding. I mean, the individuality that each warrior has is so unique, that some actually think they were modelled on real people. Hiromi Kinoshita, one of the hands in curating the exhibition that was shown at the British Museum, reckons that

These probably weren’t portraits in the Western sense…[The ceramicists] could have been told that you need to represent all the different types of people who come from different regions of China.

And that’s exactly what they did. Much like the reliefs on the remains of Persepolis, scholars have even been able to locate where some of the warriors would have been from.

Let’s now have a quick look at what we can find within the tomb.

Firstly, the floor is tiled with what is known as Qin bricks, named after the emperor of course, Each brick is bluish grey and made of the highest quality. There are about 250 000 bricks that line the floor of the pits that have been uncovered.

In regards to the warriors, basically it’s boiled down to three major categories. You’ve got your infantry, cavalry and charioteers. But more than that, you’ve also got soldiers of high, middle and low rankings, which can be discerned in their style of dress. And the charioteers can be divided into drivers and warriors.

So in our first pit, Pit 1, we will find over 6000 terracotta figures, but you can only see less than 2000. Pit 1 is the largest pit that has been uncovered, and is about the size of your average airplane hanger. There are three rows of infantry, and behind that is armoured soldiers, and then 38 chariots, each with their own set of horses. There is also a row of soldiers on each wing of the main army. Many of the figures in Pit 1 would have held real weapons, but many are gone from the looting of the Han Dynasty, and what was left has been remarkable. They were obviously treated with something that prevented them from degrading overtime, and they are even still sharp. Not bad for 2000 years.

Onto Pit 2, The excavation is still ongoing at Pits 2 and 3. But Pit 2 specifically was excavated in 1976, and is about 20 metres north of Pit 1. In Pit 2, you’ll find four units of soldiers. The first unit is archers, both standing and kneeling. The second unit is made up of more chariots. And then come a mix of infantry and chariots in the third unit. With the fourth unit bringing up the rear with weapon holding soldiers

Pit 3 is believed to have been designed as a Command Post. It’s the smallest one in size and in the number of figures. With only 68, many are without their heads, leading scholars to believe that this pit was left unfinished. The dress of the figures found in Pit 3 look to be officials, hence the Command Post.

What’s shocking to consider, is that the warriors are believed to be such a small part of the whole mausoleum. Remote sensing, and radar suggest that the tomb complex as a whole could possibly be as large as 98 square kilometres.

And what’s pretty freaky to think about, there could be so much more that is yet to be uncovered. Sima Qian, even says that the emperor was worried that those working on the tomb

Might disclose all the treasure that was in the tomb … [that] after the burial and sealing up of the treasures, the middle gate was shut and the outer gate closed to imprison all the artisans and labourers, so that no one came out.

It’s also believed that hundreds of concubines received the same fate, most likely to accompany their emperor to the afterlife.

The burial mound of the tomb, supposedly was originally 115 metres high, and with weathering over the last 2000 years, the mound is still over 70 metres, which isn’t bad if you stop to think about it.

And more and more satellite tombs and pits are being discovered surrounding the mausoleum. So this clearly was a pretty important place.

Visiting today

These days, the Terracotta Warrior Museum is right up there with the Great Wall and Beijing’s Forbidden City as a pretty popular place for tourists in China. And it’s even been called one of the greatest archaeological discoveries in the 20th century.

In fact on the 4th March in 1961, the State Council went so far as to declare the mausoleum a ‘major historical and cultural site’ that is now protected at a national level, and it was pretty groundbreaking as one of the first places in the country to reach that level or protection.

In 1979, the army was opened to the public, after a museum complex was built over the excavation site, which meant that not only can you walk around the site and see everything, but you can even see active excavation happening.

December 1987 was pretty special as well, because that was when UNESCO added the site to their World Cultural Heritage list. Now this includes the Tomb of the First Emperor and the Terracotta Army.

And in 2010, the site and museum were listed as a national archaeological park, so you know it’s not going to be built over anytime soon.

So next time you find yourselves in China, make sure to stop by the First Emperor’s tomb and discover that the poor guy just couldn’t decide on what to take with him to the afterlife, so he took everything.

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