What do the cliff tombs of Han tombs all over the city look like?

1.5 kilometers southwest of Mancheng County, Baoding City, Hebei Province, there is a small hill with many rocks and little soil. The hill is originally unknown. According to legend, the hill is the tomb of an ancient emperor, so it is called "Mausoleum". Mountain".

Lingshan is an isolated hill, adjacent to Baoyang Mountain to the west, facing Daduoshan and Yushan to the north, and boundless plains to the southeast. Lingshan itself is composed of three peaks. The main peak and the hills behind it are called Lailong and Dazhang, and the two peaks on the left and right are called Qinglong and Baihu. Standing at the foot of the mountain and looking from east to west, the three peaks look like a Taishi chair. The main peak is the back, and the green dragon and white tiger are the armrests on both sides. Facing the place where the sun rises, the ancients were superstitious and believed that being buried in a good place can protect future generations. Prosperous future generations. It is most appropriate to choose Lingshan as the cemetery.

There are many villages scattered around Lingshan. There are Beilingshan Village and Nanlingshan Village at the foot of the southeast mountain. According to local people, the two villages were originally one village, named Lingshan, but were later divided into two villages due to the increase in population. There is also a Mausoleum Village 2,000 meters southeast of the Mausoleum Mountain, which is also related to the presence of tombs in the Mausoleum Mountain. In ancient times, the tombs of emperors and princes were often managed and cared for by dedicated mausoleum guards. Because the cemetery is vast, the number of guardians is often hundreds or even thousands. Shouling Village should be the village where the households who guarded the tomb lived at that time. The villagers of this village still pass on the legend that their ancestors visited the graves of others. But because of the passage of time and time, whose grave is being cared for? Where is the grave? No one knows anymore.

In May 1968, officers and soldiers of a certain unit of the Chinese People's Liberation Army were constructing a military project on Manchengling Mountain in Hebei Province. During the construction, we encountered a broken zone, so we moved around the construction site to avoid the broken zone. As a result, when the blast was fired, the blasted stones disappeared. The officers and soldiers were very surprised. When they went over and took a look, they saw that there was a large cave underneath and there were many things in it. They took out a few items, saw that they were cultural relics, and kept them. The project was immediately stopped and a report was made to the province. The Hebei Provincial Culture Department immediately sent two archaeologists to the site for investigation and protection.

It was already in mid-June that the news of the discovery of ancient tombs in the city reached Beijing. Premier Zhou Enlai asked Guo Moruo to be responsible for handling this matter, and hoped to report to him as soon as possible a handling opinion.

After Guo Moruo was ordered, he immediately sent people to Mancheng to understand the situation on the spot. Later, a special meeting was held at the Academy of Sciences to study and determine candidates to participate in the archaeological excavation.

After all preparations were in place, the excavation team jointly composed of the Institute of Archeology of the Chinese Academy of Sciences and the Hebei Provincial Cultural Relics Team officially began excavation work on June 27. An important archaeological discovery in the 20th century was thus It kicked off, and the unknown Mancheng suddenly became the focus of the world's attention.

After the excavation work began, in order to save time and prevent damage to the cultural relics, the archaeological experts did not rush to open the tomb door. Instead, they first entered and exited through the hole blown up by the People's Liberation Army during construction at the southern end of the south ear chamber until it was cleaned. After collecting various cultural relics, the tomb door was finally opened.

Different from the pit tombs popular in the Western Han Dynasty, the Han tombs in Mancheng are rather unique cliff tombs. What is a cliff tomb? It turns out that since the Shang and Zhou Dynasties, the shape of tombs in our country has basically been earth pit tombs with vertical pits. For example, the Caihou Tomb in Shouxian County, Anhui and the Qin Tomb in Suihudi, Yunmeng, Hubei are square and rectangular earth pit tombs with vertical pits respectively, while Tomb No. 1 in Mawangdui and the Han Tomb in Fenghuang Mountain in Jiangling are all vertical pit pits in the early Western Han Dynasty. Representative of wooden coffin tomb. However, the tomb chambers of Han tombs in Mancheng are huge caves dug into the mountains. They are different from traditional tombs and are horizontal cave tombs. They are generally called cliff tombs.

The reason why Zhongshan King Liu Sheng, the owner of the Han tombs in the city, chose this kind of cliff tomb for burial was probably influenced by his grandfather, Emperor Wen of the Han Dynasty. According to historical records, the Ba Mausoleum of Liu Sheng's grandfather, Emperor Wen of Han, was also a cliff tomb based on a mountain. When Emperor Wen of the Han Dynasty passed by Baling, he told his ministers that my tomb was made of northern mountain rocks and wrapped in silk, cotton, lacquer and silk, so that it would be safe forever. Minister Zhang Shizhi replied: As long as there is nothing valuable in it, the stone coffin will not be destroyed even if it is not used. Emperor Wen of the Han Dynasty repeatedly praised the good deeds. Later, when building the Ba Mausoleum, he ordered that the mountains and rivers should not be changed, and that gold, silver, copper and tin should not be buried with him, but earthen vessels should be used instead. It was known as "frugal burial". The Han tombs in Mancheng are similar to Ba Ling, except that Liu Sheng was not only buried with gold, silver, copper and tin, but also many rare treasures.

Observed from the cemetery site, before Liu Sheng dug the tomb cave, he first built a road up the mountain, from the foot of the southeast mountain to the east slope of the main peak selected for the cemetery. These ancient mountain roads are what the local people call " Horse racing track". After the mountain road was built, the rock was excavated from east to west in the middle of the main peak, more than 30 meters away from the top of the mountain, to create a cliff face. After the cliff face reached a certain height, a cave was dug to create a tomb chamber. The entrance to the tomb was sealed with adobe. At the same time, condensed molten iron was found in some gaps between the adobe blocks, indicating that the tomb's sealed door was tied between two adobe walls and poured with molten iron to form an iron door. . The outside of the door was filled with stones. The purpose of all this trouble is of course to prevent theft.

The total length of Liu Sheng’s tomb is 51.7 meters, the widest point is 37.5 meters, the highest point is 6.8 meters, and the volume is about 2,700 cubic meters. The tomb of his wife Dou Wan is 49.7 meters long, 65 meters wide at its widest point, 7.9 meters high at its highest point, and has a volume of nearly 3,000 square meters. The two tombs are basically the same shape and are divided into tomb passages and corridors. There are six parts: the south ear chamber, the north ear chamber, the middle chamber and the back chamber. The corridor is immediately adjacent to the tomb passage, with symmetrical north and south ear chambers on both sides, followed by a wide and approximately square middle chamber.

There is a stone door between the middle chamber and the back chamber. The back chamber of Liu Sheng's tomb is behind the middle chamber, while the back chamber of Dou Wan's tomb is on the right side of the middle chamber. From the observation of excavated phenomena, the corridor, south ear chamber, north ear chamber and middle chamber of Liu Sheng's tomb, as well as the middle chamber of Dou Wan's tomb, originally had wooden houses with tile roofs built in the caves, which later collapsed due to decay of the wood. . The back chambers of the two tombs are stone houses built with stone slabs in the cave. They have three parts: a doorway, a main chamber and a side chamber. A corridor was also dug into the back room surrounding Liu Sheng's tomb. There are drainage facilities inside the tomb. The tops of each chamber in the two tombs are arched or dome-shaped, and the walls of the chambers are all cut into arcs. No structural form of straight walls and right angles has been found. After more than 2,000 years, the tomb chambers are basically well preserved, and they may have been dug with them. The form conforms to the principles of mechanics.

Judging from the unearthed artifacts in each tomb, the north and south chambers are storehouses and carriage and horse houses, the middle chamber is a large hall, and the back chamber is an inner chamber symbolizing a bedroom. This kind of cave tomb that imitates the owner's palace and house has obvious contemporary characteristics. It is later than the rectangular wooden tomb that was common in the early Western Han Dynasty in my country, and earlier than the multi-chamber brick tombs and stone chamber tombs that existed in the late Western Han Dynasty and the Eastern Han Dynasty. In the coffin and coffin system On the other hand, the old ritual system of "five layers of princes" coffins in the early Western Han Dynasty was changed to use one coffin and one coffin and jade-inlaid lacquer coffins. In terms of burial customs, couples are buried in the same cave, which is the so-called "burial in the same grave", which is different from the system of burial in the same cave that gradually became popular in the late Western Han Dynasty.

The carefully designed tomb chamber is a arduous project and a large scale. It is estimated that it would take hundreds of people about a year to dig such a huge tomb in the rock, even using modern construction methods. It is conceivable that under the technical conditions of more than 2,000 years ago, manual digging was carried out using hammers and iron drills. The amount of manpower, material resources and time consumed must be staggering.