Why did ancient grave robbers dare not steal Wu Zetian's dry tomb? Are there any special precautions in Ganling?

Many emperors' tombs have been stolen in history, because the funerary objects of ancient kings are very valuable, so they have become lighthouses in everyone's eyes. As long as moral barriers can be overcome, they can basically be obtained. But strangely, the tomb of Wu Zetian, Gan Ling, has never been stolen. Actually, it's a little hard to understand. Is it because Ganling has any special anti-theft skills? Let's answer this puzzle for everyone. Let's have a look.

Most emperors have a tradition of reburial, and a large number of rare treasures are often buried in tombs, which is followed by endless grave robbery. In peacetime, robbing the imperial tomb is just a petty folk behavior. Once it is uncovered, grave robbers will be severely punished.

However, during the war, the act of robbing the imperial tombs became a common phenomenon, which was not only popular among the people, but also participated by individual officials and the military, and the scale was quite large.

Dong Zhuo once dug all the tombs in the Eastern Han Dynasty, and was called the "V" in grave robbery.

It has always been common for soldiers to participate in grave robbery. For example, Fan Chong, the leader of the Red Eyebrow Army in the last years of Xin Mang, and Dong Zhuo, a national thief in the last years of the Eastern Han Dynasty, have successively excavated two tombs of the Han Dynasty and gained numerous treasures. Sun Dianying, a thief of Dongling in modern times, excavated the tombs of Qianlong and Cixi and gained a lot.

However, the military's participation in grave robbery is, after all, a matter of contempt for the world, so their excavation activities are usually secret, and the excavation time will not be too long to prevent outsiders from knowing.

In the large-scale excavation of the imperial tombs involving the military, an "alien" not only committed crimes for a long time, but also dared to register the excavation results and make them public in China. This is extremely arrogant. This man is Wen Tao, a warlord of the Five Dynasties. He once robbed seventeen tombs of the Tang Dynasty.

Incredibly, although Wen Tao was crazy, he just didn't dare to dig Wu Zetian's grave. What happened?

Wen Tao in the Tang Dynasty once dug seventeen tombs. He was very arrogant.

Wen Tao was a Jingzhao Chinese in the late Tang Dynasty. When he was young, he became a fugitive. Later, he was adopted by Li, a native of Fengxiang, and changed his name. He was appointed as the town commander in Huayuan, his hometown. Because he followed Li Yougong, he was promoted to Yaozhou Secretariat (Yaozhou is Huayuan).

Wen Tao is a typical "swing" warlord. Whoever is strong will submit to him, and there is no loyalty at all. In the late Tang Dynasty, he wandered between Li and Zhu Wen, and was appointed as our ambassador to Jingsheng, renamed Wen Zhaotu.

Jingsheng County is under the jurisdiction of Guanzhong area, and there were tombs (eighteen tombs) in Tang Dynasty. Wen Tao served as our minister for seven years. Taking advantage of his position, he systematically and massively destroyed the tombs of emperors in the Tang Dynasty, and * * * illegally excavated 17, and obtained numerous rare treasures.

Distribution map of eighteen imperial tombs in Tang Dynasty

However, as a soldier, Wen Tao is only interested in gold, silver, jewels and jade, but he doesn't know the value of other paintings and calligraphy. Therefore, in the process of robbing the tomb, he often destroyed it at will, so that many rare treasures were destroyed at once, including Wang Xizhi's calligraphy masterpiece "Preface to the Zhaoling Tomb of Emperor Taizong", which was greatly regretted by future generations.

Wen Tao's original intention of robbing the imperial tombs in the Tang Dynasty was only to raise the salary and expand the army. However, with the increase in the number of crimes and the treasures obtained, after solving the dilemma of the shortage of military pay, his purpose of robbing the tomb became to satisfy his abnormal curiosity.

After excavating 17 imperial tombs, Wen Tao targeted the tombs of Tang Gaozong and Wu Zetian-Ganling. Wen Tao finally dug Ganling, because he heard that when Huang Chao tried to dig Ganling, he encountered many supernatural phenomena, but he didn't dig it. Wen Tao is not sure.

Ganling is the burial tomb of Tang Gaozong and Wu Zetian.

But the rain is like a piece of fat hanging on the beam, which always makes it hard for Wen Tao, a greedy fox, to give up. Therefore, after excavating another 17 graves, Wen Tao decided to start working on the Ganling. Strange things may happen again. Whenever the tomb raiding team in Wen Tao prepares to break ground, there will be thunder and lightning around Ganling, and the scene is extremely terrible. When the team hastily retreats, the rain will fall quickly and the weather around the mausoleum will be fine.

This happened several times in a row, as if there were gods guarding Ganling. Wen Tao didn't understand why, but his heart was so scared that he finally had to stop.

Both the official history and unofficial history recorded that due to the abnormal phenomenon in Ganling, Wen Tao stopped digging. Among them, Ouyang Xiu, a great writer, recorded in the "History of the New Five Dynasties" that "Tao was in the town for seven years, and the tomb of the Tang Dynasty was discovered in its territory, and the treasures it contained were taken ... but the violence in Ganling could not be built."

Ganling underground palace

Cheng Dachang, another great writer in the Song Dynasty, also recorded in the Archaeological Collection that "the history of Tao Wen almost made the Tang Mausoleum, but he couldn't get close to it alone, and he heard about the wind and rain." This shows that the credibility of this matter is quite high.

Although it is a "pity" to leave Ganling, the record of excavating seventeen tombs in the Tang Dynasty still made Wen Tao famous all over the world and was regarded as a model by later grave robbers. After the grave robbers succeed, they will treasure the stolen treasure for fear that outsiders will know. However, Wen Tao did the opposite, fearing that everyone would not know about his grave robbery. In order to publicize his "achievements" in robbing tombs, he compiled many treasures into a book, and his courage was far behind that of his peers.

At the end of the Tang Dynasty, Ming Taizu Li Siyuan killed Wen Tao in order to punish him.

Tao Wen bribed the monarchs and ministers of the dynasty with stolen treasures. Although it was notorious in Hou Liang and the post-Tang Dynasty, the official grew bigger and bigger, and his life was quite comfortable and moist. However, when Mingzong came to power in the later Tang Dynasty, Wen Tao's good days soon ended. On the one hand, Mingzong hated Wen Tao's fickle style. On the other hand, he was afraid that his practice of excavating the imperial tomb would be imitated by later generations, so he made an excuse to exterminate it in 928 AD, as an example.