The Mausoleum of the First Emperor of Qin

On the north side of Mount Li, on the south bank of the Wei River, stands the mausoleum of an emperor. It is the mausoleum of the First Emperor Qin Shi Huang. It is located 1.5 kilometers east of Lintong District, Xi’an City, Shaanxi Province, which is backed by Mount Li and faces the Wei River, a beautiful landscape. It was once a glorious and spectacular scene with high platforms and houses lined up, but now all that remains is a pile of yellow soil covered with barren grass, silently telling the story of the former prosperity.

The Mausoleum of Qin Shi Huang is the first emperor tomb in the history of China. It has a 38-year-long history of tomb construction, and at the most, more than 700,000 laborers participated in tomb building. It is a miracle in the history of Chinese emperors’ tombs. The scale and layout of the mausoleum are grand, and the construction and destruction of the mausoleum’s buildings have undergone all kinds of hardships after more than 2,000 years of wind and rain. Nowadays, the traces of the robbery can still be seen inside and outside the mausoleum.

The Mausoleum of Qin Shi Huang, also known as the Lishan Garden, is a rectangular mausoleum that is larger from north to south than from east to west. The city wall of the mausoleum consists of two layers, inside and outside. Both walls are rectangular in a north-south direction and fit into each other. It is long from north to south and narrow from east to west. The mausoleum (covered by a seal and built under the underground palace) is located in the southern half of the inner city. The underground palace under the tomb is located inside the palace city and is the core of the entire mausoleum. It is recorded in the Records of the Grand Historian that “a hundred rivers and seas were filled with mercury. Although the tomb details are not clear, there is indeed a strong mercury anomaly above the palace that exceeds the normal value by several times.

On the south side of the underground palace wall, there is an east-west ditch nearly 40 meters wide. There is also a Z-shaped drainage canal on its west side. The inner city wall has the most above-ground underground facilities, especially the southern half of the inner city. The underground palace, chambers, chariots and horses, warehouses and many other burial pits are located in the southern half of the inner city. The western part of the northern half of the inner city is the area of the ancillary buildings of the palace, and the eastern part is the area of the burial tombs of the harem staff.

This layout clearly illustrates that the southern part of the inner city is the focal area and the northern part is the subsidiary area. The connotations of the facilities in the northern and southern parts are within the scope of the palace. The part of the outer outline city between the inner and outer walls, according to archaeological data, has the most intensive surface and underground facilities in the western zone. From south to north, they have distributed in order: a large curved ruler-shaped stable pit, 31 pits of rare birds and animals, 48 burial tombs of harem personnel, and three groups of quadrangle-style garden and temple official building sites. In the southern part of the eastern district, there is a large burial pit, and a large number of stone armors and a few carriages have been unearthed in the test excavation, while the acrobats’ pit is not far to the south of it. No remains or relics have been found in the southern and northern parts of the inner city.

Archaeological drilling has shown that the western part of the outer outline city was a key area, symbolizing the stables, the catchment area and the garden and temple offices of the capital. Compared to the inner city, it clearly had a subordinate status. The area outside the outer city wall: to the east are the Terracotta Warriors and Horses pits, 98 small stable pits and numerous burial tombs. To the west, there are three burial sites for tomb repairers, brick kilns, and stone quarries. To the north, there are storage pits containing animal limbs and turtles, the official offices of the mausoleum supervisors, and the site of the Liyi building. To the south, there is a flood control dike about 40 meters wide near Li Mountain. After more than 2,000 years of weathering, the architectural remains of the Qin Shi Huang Mausoleum have been lost, except for the partial remnants of the sealing earth and the southern inner city wall.

After the exploration and excavation of the inner and outer city gates, their subsidiary sites and several other gate sites and city walls, it was found that the inner and outer gates were courtyard-style buildings with three queue-style buildings. What is particularly noteworthy is that the inner city wall is a corridor-type city wall with corridors on both inner and outer sides, and its four corners also have corner towers.

Since Chinese society was in a period of great transition at the time of the Qin Shi Huang. The transitional nature and complexity of Qin Shihuang’s tomb are often unexpected. In this regard, Yuan Zhongyi argues that the exploration and excavation of Qin Shihuang’s mausoleum, which was built according to the concept of “death as alive”, and the new rule of “the supremacy of imperial power”, was often surprising.