What was the entire process of excavation of Emperor Wanli’s tomb?

In 1955, New China organized a group of experts and established the "Changling Excavation Committee", whose members were Guo Moruo, Shen Yanbing, Wu Han, Wang Kunlun, Deng Tuo, Fan Wenlan, Zhang Su, Xia Nai, Zheng Zhenduo and other nine people.

The committee has set up a working team to be responsible for the excavation work. From the development of the Zhou Dynasty to the Ming and Qing Dynasties, the tombs of emperors in my country have tended to become stereotyped, and the land sealing method basically adopts the method of Baocheng and Baoding. After exploration, no clues to the Changling Underground Palace were found.

Dingling is one of the Thirteen Tombs of the Ming Dynasty. It is the tomb where the Wanli Emperor Ming Shenzong Zhu Yijun and his two queens are buried together. Archaeologists first prepared to excavate Zhu Di's Changling Tomb. However, due to the failure of the test excavation, Dingling became a substitute.

The construction of Dingling Tomb lasted for 6 years and cost 8 million taels of silver. The underground palace is located 27 meters underground and consists of a tunnel, a front hall, a middle hall, left and right side halls, and an apse hall. It covers an area of ??more than 1100 square meters. After research, the committee decided to turn its target to Dingling. By chance, the entrance to the Dingling Underground Palace was successfully discovered by the staff.

On May 17, 1956, the staff officially excavated Dingling. On May 17, 1957, after a year of hard work by the committee, the seal of the Dingling King Kong Wall was finally discovered, and the entrance to the underground Xuan Palace of Dingling was found. After exhausting the gas in the underground palace, in order to prevent the remaining toxic gas from harming people, the excavators did not enter the underground palace immediately. Instead, they placed a big rooster inside. This method was unsuccessful.

The staff had no choice but to send a team member wearing a gas mask to go down into the cave. Fortunately, everything is fine. The team members descended into the hole one after another, and photographers from the Central News Record Film Studio also followed the hole. After walking through the end of the tomb passage, the stone gate of Dingling's underground palace stood in front of the team members. The two doors are made of a single piece of white marble, 3.3 meters high and 1.7 meters wide. There are milk-shaped door nails on each door, with nine rows vertically and horizontally, 81 of them.

Because there is a stone bar behind the stone gate, the staff used a piece of No. 8 wire to make the "turning nail key" described in the ancient book "Susong Zhi". After the stone door was opened, the Dingling Underground Palace finally appeared in front of the team members. Inside the stone gate is the front hall of the underground palace, which is 25 meters long from east to west, 6 meters long from north to south, and 7.2 meters high.

There is a decaying yellow pine floor with wheel marks on the ground, which was designed to protect the brick surface during the burial. After passing the front hall, open the second stone door and enter, which is the middle hall of Dingling. This hall displays the thrones of Emperor Wanli and his two queens. In front of the thrones are five yellow glazed offerings, namely one incense burner, two candlesticks, and two vases. There is a corridor on the north and south walls of the central hall leading to the side hall, but there is a coffin bed but no coffin.

With doubts, the team members opened the last apse of the underground palace, and saw three coffin beds placed in the west part of the middle of the palace, with three red lacquer coffins lined up on the coffin beds. After expert appraisal, it was determined that the middle one belonged to the Mingshen Sect. After intense cleaning, the staff cleared out the funerary objects inside and outside the three coffins, totaling 2,648 pieces. The picture shows the skull of Emperor Wanli.

According to expert research, the wear and tear of Emperor Wanli's teeth is extremely slight, indicating that his food is extremely fine. It is precisely because of the fine food that Emperor Wanli suffered from severe periodontal disease and dental caries. In addition, there were wedge-shaped defects on Emperor Wanli's teeth, which on the one hand showed that his brushing method was incorrect, and on the other hand it showed that the use of toothbrushes was common in the palace at that time.

Emperor Wanli’s golden dragon-wing crown is made entirely of 0.2 mm fine gold wire, as thin as a cicada’s wing, and weighs only 826 grams. There is a pattern of two dragons playing with a pearl. The holes are well-proportioned and the surface does not reveal any traces of joints. It is a work of art. Due to lack of archaeological experience at that time, the staff did not wear gloves and took out the gold crown directly with their hands.

Researchers from the Institute of Vertebrate Paleontology and Paleoanthropology of the Chinese Academy of Sciences found that Emperor Wanli had a hunchback and was 1.64 meters tall. By examining the hair left on Emperor Wanli's body, it was found that Emperor Wanli's blood type was AB. At the end of July 1958, after two years and two months, archaeologists finally revealed the tomb that had been hidden for 368 years. However, due to technical reasons and lack of experience, many cultural relics in the underground palace have not been properly preserved.

The architectural structure of Dingling

The main buildings in the mausoleum area include stone bridges, stele pavilions, mausoleum gates, Ren'en gates, Ren'en hall, Minglou, Baocheng and underground palaces etc., the main buildings are located on a central axis. In addition, there are ancillary buildings such as the divine kitchen, the divine storehouse, the slaughtering pavilion, the ancestral temple, and the divine palace supervisor around the mausoleum.

The underground palace is the main part of Dingling. It is 27 meters deep and consists of five halls: front, middle, back, left and right, with a construction area of ??1195 square meters. The left and right side halls are two relatively symmetrical halls, with a coffin bed built of white marble in the middle. The two side halls are connected to the central hall by a corridor. There are three white marble pedestals in the middle hall, and the five offerings and everlasting lanterns of the emperor and empress are placed.

The back hall is the largest hall in the underground palace. The coffins of Emperor Wanli and the two queens are placed in the center of the coffin bed in the hall. Around the coffin are jade materials, plum vases and red-lacquered wooden boxes filled with burial objects. The unearthed funerary objects include the emperor's and queen's clothing, treasures, ancient artifacts, wooden figurines, armor, knives, arrows, gold, silver, jade, porcelain vessels and a large number of silk fabrics.