The Mawangdui Han Tomb ancient corpse refers to the discovery of a Han Dynasty tomb in the eastern suburbs of Changsha City, Hunan Province in 1972. Some people hail it as the underground cultural treasure house of the Han nation, and Westerners call it the "Pompeii" of the East. Although underground cultural relics continue to appear, the cultural brilliance of Mawangdui remains undiminished. Its "uniqueness" in many fields makes it a well-deserved national treasure!
The ancient corpses in Mawangdui Han Tombs are known as the "Sleeping Beauty of the East". She provides an unparalleled model for world medicine.
The cultural contribution is so huge that it will take more than a few lifetimes to study it. In 1972, there was a mound near Wuli Monument in the eastern suburbs of Changsha City. According to legend, it was the cemetery of Ma Yin, King of Chu during the Five Dynasties and Ten Kingdoms period, so it was called "Mawangdui". There are two earthen mounds of equal size and round tops here. Legend has it that this is where Changsha King Liu Fa buried his mother Tang (birth mother) and Cheng's second concubine, so it is called the "Two Daughter Tombs".
The early 1970s was a war preparation period of "digging holes deeply, accumulating food widely, and not seeking hegemony". On July 30 of this year, a military hospital not far from Mawangdui chose two mounds on high ground to dig air-raid shelters. While the medical staff were drilling and detecting the hole, a burst of cold air suddenly came out of the hole. Someone poured water into the hole, but the water that was poured in was splashed out. As a result, various versions of suspicious comments spread locally. Faced with the incredible strange phenomenon, the military hospital reported the situation to the Hunan Provincial Museum, thus kicking off the archaeological excavation of the Mawangdui Han Tomb. To uncover the mystery of the tomb, archaeological researchers have done a lot of complicated preparatory work.
In early 1972, archaeologists from the Institute of Archeology of the Chinese Academy of Sciences and the Hunan Provincial Museum began excavations in the eastern mound. They excavated the earth to reveal a rectangular tomb with a slope tomb passage and four steps. When digging further, they discovered a layer of After taking out the white paste mud, a large amount of charcoal was unearthed. After removing the charcoal, yellowed bamboo mats were revealed. The archaeologists carefully opened the 26 bamboo mats buried deep in the ground, and a huge coffin chamber was completely completed. Show it in front of people. The entire coffin room is constructed of heavy pine wood, 6.73 meters long, 4.9 meters wide, and 2.8 meters high. Four partitions divide the coffin room into four parts in the shape of a "well", with auspicious patterns painted on the inside and outside. The inner coffin is red lacquer and the black lacquer is the outer supplement. In the middle is the inner coffin for the corpse. The coffin was wrapped with two fine silk bundles. Such exquisite brocade ornaments were rarely found in previous tomb excavations. After the archaeologists opened the coffin, they were surprised to find that despite more than 2,000 years, the female body in the coffin was well preserved. Archaeological experts designated this tomb as Tomb No. 1.
The tomb shape and coffin structure of the Mawangdui Han Tomb show the wisdom of the working people of the Han nationality in ancient China. It turns out that the terrain of Mawangdui is relatively high. When building the tomb, the lower part of the pit was first dug out on the hill. The bottom of the tomb was 7.6 meters long and 6.7 meters wide, with pads and two floors underneath. In the huge coffin chamber and The upper part of the four-layer coffin (the fourth layer is the inner coffin for direct burial of corpses) is covered with a roof plate and two layers of cover plates. It is made by fastening, tenoning and bolting techniques, using approximately 52 cubic meters of wood; The upper part of the tomb pit and the tomb passage were rammed using the block-building method. The bottom of the tomb and around the coffin chamber were filled with charcoal with a thickness of 0.4 to 0.5 meters and a total weight of about 5,000 kilograms. The charcoal is water-absorbent and moisture-proof to keep the tomb dry. Efficacy: About 1.3 meters thick white paste mud is piled around the periphery of the charcoal. The white paste mud has strong viscosity and low permeability, which plays a decisive role in sealing the tomb. Then it is filled with soil layer by layer, compacted and dense, and piled up to a height of about 16 meters. The mound of earth created a constant temperature, constant humidity, anoxic, and sterile environment for the coffin chamber buried deep underground, and the coffin, the body of the tomb owner, and the funerary objects were all well preserved. At the end of 1973, archaeologists excavated the West Tomb and completed it in early 1974. However, the white plaster mud in the tomb was thin and unevenly distributed, and the sealing was poor and it was severely damaged. The archaeologists classified this tomb as 2 Tomb number. While tomb No. 2 was being excavated, Tomb No. 3, located to the south of Tomb No. 1, was also discovered. The structure of Tomb No. 3 is basically similar to that of Tomb No. 1, but the scale is slightly smaller. Many precious burial objects were preserved, but due to the The white plaster mud was not sealed tightly, causing some of the funerary objects to rot.
Identity of the Tomb Owner
Who is the owner of the Mawangdui Han Tomb? From the seals, seals and inscriptions on the utensils buried in the tomb, it was confirmed that three seals were found in Tomb No. 2: "Prime Minister of Changsha", "Seal of Marquis Biao" and "Li Cang", indicating that the owner of the tomb was the first generation of Biao. Hou Licang. According to historical data, Li Cang, the prime minister of Changsha, died in the third year of Gao Hou (186 BC). Among the funerary objects in Tomb No. 1 is a seal with the title "Concubine Xin Zhui", and the owner of the tomb is Li Cang's wife; the remains of the owner of Tomb No. 3 are a man in his 30s, Li Cang's son, and a wooden tablet was unearthed There are words such as "Yiji and Wuchen in December of the twelfth year", indicating that the tomb was buried in the twelfth year of Emperor Wen of the Han Dynasty (168 BC). These three tombs are actually the family tombs of Li Cang, the Prime Minister of Changsha. The funerary items were lavish.
In the well-preserved Tombs No. 1 and No. 3, the unearthed funerary objects are extremely rich. They are placed in side boxes around the coffin room. They are mainly clothes, food, medicinal materials, toiletries and daily necessities. Supplies, chess and entertainment equipment, bamboo tubes for holding food and items, lacquer and pottery containers and lacquer wood utensils, bamboo and wood utensils and musical instruments, weapons, wooden figurines and Ming ware (underworld utensils made into models or idols for burial), And the bamboo slips of "Send Policy". In addition, in Tomb No. 3, "Book of Changes", "Laozi", astronomy, medicine, military books, Xiangma Jing and other simplified and silk books were also found, including 28 kinds of books with a total of more than 120,000 words, as well as the "Southern Changsha Kingdom" Two color maps: "Topographic Map" and "Garrison Map". The large number of unearthed cultural relics and the distinctive characteristics of the era, especially the well-preserved and exquisitely crafted silk fabrics, dazzling lacquered woodware, and silk books and paintings of academic value, amazed archaeological experts.
The "Qiance" bamboo slips record in detail the burial objects. 312 items were unearthed from Tomb No. 1 and 410 items were unearthed from Tomb No. 3. They are the two most complete batches of similar bamboo slips discovered so far. The list of objects listed on the bamboo slips of "Qing Ce" shows that later generations moved the food and daily necessities of the deceased into the tomb. For example, Tomb No. 1 contains rice, wheat, millet, beans and other crops packed in sacks; lacquer utensils are filled with cooked livestock and poultry dishes, lacquer tripods are filled with various soups, and pottery dishes are filled with It contains various condiments such as wine and sauce, as well as many seasonal fruits. When unearthed, the rice was golden yellow with plump grains. After being stored for a long time, it gradually became dehydrated and shriveled. Fruits such as lotus roots and peaches were still as fresh as before when unearthed, but soon rotted and turned into a puddle of water (the tombs are prone to oxidation in Kaifeng).
In the early Western Han Dynasty, lacquerware was a fashionable and expensive item. Due to the complicated production process, the price was much higher than that of bronze. There are more than 500 pieces of lacquerware unearthed from the Mawangdui Han Tomb (184 pieces in Tomb No. 1 and 316 pieces in Tomb No. 3). This is the largest and best-preserved batch of lacquerware found across the country. This batch of bright and new lacquerware mainly includes tripods, boxes, pots, earrings, pots, plates, boxes, cases, screens, etc. Most of them are lacquered with decorative patterns in black, red, gray, green and other colors, usually in black. On the bottom, the pattern is mainly geometric, supplemented by dragon, phoenix and grass patterns. The pattern is exquisite and delicate. Some lacquerware books have the words "Biaohoujia", "Junxingjiu" and "Junxingshi", as well as lacquerware indicating the capacity of the utensil (such as "nine liters", etc.); many lacquerware have the stamp "Chengshikou" , indicating that it was made by a government workshop in Chengdu.
A large number of silk fabrics and embroideries such as silk, gauze, qi, Luo and brocade were unearthed in Han tombs, including clothes, hats, various clothing fabrics and a small amount of linen. Two cicada-like plain gauze garments unearthed from Tomb No. 1 are 128 centimeters long and 190 centimeters long with two sleeves stretched out. However, they are surprisingly light in weight, with the garments weighing 48 grams and 49 grams respectively. Among various silk fabrics, archaeological experts discovered for the first time the velvet brocades decorated on the edges of clothes. The velvet brocade patterns protrude from the brocade surface, creating a very plump and gorgeous three-dimensional effect. People used to think that velvet brocade fabric only appeared after the Tang Dynasty, and some people thought that this textile technology was introduced from abroad. This archaeological discovery proves that our ancestors had invented velvet brocade in the early Western Han Dynasty. Weaving technology, the Chinese are the founders of velvet fabrics. The gold-silver printed yarn and printed colored yarn unearthed from Tomb No. 1 were also discovered for the first time, indicating that the printing and dyeing process reached a superb technical level at that time, which greatly enriched the historical materials of ancient Chinese textile printing and dyeing technology.
There were many silk paintings in the Han Dynasty, but most of them have been lost. There are more than 10 colored silk paintings unearthed from the Mawangdui Han Tomb, accounting for nearly half of the silk paintings unearthed in the country. The silk paintings depict soaring dragons, fairy birds, monsters, double snakes, giant fish, turtles and other patterns that are lifelike and full of mythological color; the characters, animals, clouds and utensils are symmetrical and have smooth lines, demonstrating the excellence of Western Han Dynasty painting. The most typical ones are the painted silk paintings covering the inner coffins in Tomb No. 1 and Tomb No. 3. The compositions of the two silk paintings are basically similar. The paintings are in the shape of a "T" and are about 2 meters long. There are floating tassels on the four corners. There is a ribbon tied at the top for hanging. It is a flag used to guide the funeral procession of the deceased during the funeral. The unearthed silk paintings are brightly colored, solemn and elegant. The upper part of the banner picture is painted with figures such as the sun, the moon, the rising dragon, and the snake-bodied god and man, symbolizing the heavenly realm. The lower part is painted with dragons crossing the wall, as well as the tomb owner traveling, waiting in the palace, and having a banquet. Scenes such as this reflect the theme of "leading souls to heaven" and are extremely rare art treasures.
The cultural relics unearthed from the Mawangdui Han Tomb provide extremely important physical information for studying the development of economy, science and technology in the early Han Dynasty, as well as the history, culture and social life at that time. Scientific interpretation of the thousand-year-old female corpse. The excavation of the Mawangdui Han Tomb in Changsha was a major archaeological discovery in China in the 20th century. In particular, the thousand-year-old female corpse in Tomb No. 1 has attracted widespread attention from the domestic and foreign scientific and technological circles and is considered to have "created the world's highest corpse preservation record." miracle".
The female corpse was about 50 years old, 1.54 meters tall and weighed 34.3 kilograms. After opening the coffin, it was found that the female corpse was soaked in a colorless liquid about 20 centimeters deep in the coffin (it gradually turned brown soon after being unearthed). yellow). The preservation of the body is so fresh and complete. Could it be that chemical embalming liquids were used more than 2,000 years ago? Scientific analysis has shown that the water in the coffin seeped into the tomb through the soil, white plaster mud and charcoal layer and accumulated over a long period of time. Although it contains a small amount of mercury sulfide antiseptic substance, which has a weak antibacterial effect, this This is by no means the fundamental reason for preserving the body. The ancient corpses were well preserved because the thick coffins were tightly sealed and buried deep underground.
The female corpse in Tomb No. 1 has been clinically examined by medical scientists: the fine structures such as connective tissue, muscle tissue and cartilage are well preserved, the whole body is soft and elastic, the skin is fine and smooth, some joints can rotate, and even the joints on the hands and feet can be rotated. The texture is also clearly visible. However, pathological anatomy examination revealed that the deceased suffered from coronary heart disease, multiple cholelithiasis, systemic atherosclerosis, tuberculosis lesions in the right upper lung, a fracture in the right forearm, and whipworm eggs and pinworms in the rectum and liver. eggs and schistosomiasis eggs, and a congenital malformation of one gallbladder. The various lesions on the female corpse provide valuable scientific information for the study of paleopathology, the history of ancient diseases and the development history of Chinese medicine. After medical identification, the deceased's blood type was type A and she had given birth before her death, which confirmed the fact that she had two sons recorded in history books. So how did she die? After analysis, the woman's body had plump subcutaneous fat, no bedsores on her skin, and no signs of advanced aging, so she should have died of a sudden illness. Judging from the symptoms and anatomy, it was found that there were 138 and a half melon seeds in his esophagus, stomach and intestines. The time of death should be in summer. It may be that eating raw and cold melons caused biliary colic, which induced coronary artery spasm and led to severe heart rhythm disorders. And sudden death.
Xin Zhui, the owner of tomb No. 1, first died of his authoritative husband Li Cang, and then his son who led the troops to guard the garrison, General Ren. In a feudal society where men are superior to women, why did a woman die after her death? A grand burial with such an honor? According to historical records: In 202 BC, Liu Bang established the Western Han Dynasty, which had a vast territory and enfeoffed seven kings with different surnames in order to stabilize the world. Later, as their power developed, these princes became entrenched in one area, seriously endangering the centralized rule. So Liu Bang used various excuses to get rid of these kings with different surnames and replaced them with his own relatives. However, Wang Wu Rui, a king with a different surname in Changsha Kingdom, has not yet taken action because there is a South Vietnam Kingdom (today's Guangzhou) with stronger military strength in the south of Changsha Kingdom. In order to protect this strategic location, Liu Bang wanted to win over the Changsha Kingdom and prevent the Changsha Kingdom from rebelling, so he sent Li Cang to the Changsha Kingdom to supervise Wu Rui. County (today's Xinyang area of ??Henan Province), so it was called Bianhou.
After Li Cang's death, his son Li Xi succeeded him to the title (the owner of tomb No. 3 is Li?'s brother). Based on this, it can be inferred that Xin Zhui's tomb should have been built by the filial son Li Fu. Historical records: The last generation of Bianhou was named Lifu. Because he violated the laws of the Han Dynasty, he was deprived of his hereditary title. Bianhou disappeared from history.