21 11 月 The Owner of the Accompanying Burial Pit in Shangjiao Village of Emperor Chin Tomb
The Tomb in Shangjiao Village is one of the many accompanying tombs of Emperor Chin tomb, 350 meters west of the outer city of Qin’s tomb. 17 tombs were discovered in October 1976 by the archaeological team after exploration. These tombs are all oriented east-west and arranged in a line from north to south, with a spacing of 2-15 meters between tombs, and with high burial specifications and abundant funerary objects.
From the 8 trial excavations, the tomb form is an A-shaped tomb with a sloping tomb path, the coffin is rectangular. There were 2 women and 5 men in the 8 graves, and only one bronze short sword in a tomb. After identification, except for 1 female aged around 20 years old, the rest were around 30 years old. The burial objects in these tombs are relatively abundant, with gold foil strips, silver toads, bronze swords, jade and other relics. Especially the silver toad buried with a vivid shape, in its mouth also engraved with the word “Shaofu”, Shaofu is the name of the central handicraft production office at that time. The skeletons of the dead in these tombs are very disorganized and were buried after being dismembered. One of the skulls also had a bronze arrowhead inserted, indicating that it was shot and then dismembered. It is evident that the tomb owners all died unnaturally.
The 17 tombs are probably to be related to court politics in the late Qin Dynasty. After Qin Shi Huang died of illness in Shaqiu, Zhao Gao and Hu Hai conspired to usurp power. In the Records of the Grand Historian, it is written that “twelve of the princes died in the capital city Xianyang, and ten princesses died in the city of Du”, and Duke Gao wrote, “I beg to die and wish to hide at the foot of Mount Li. “This shows that twelve princes were killed in Xianyang and ten princesses were dismembered and died in Du (today’s Chang’an district of Xi’an), while Duke Gao offered to be buried with the First Emperor voluntarily. It is recorded in the Historical Records that prince Jianglu and Kundi were imprisoned in the palace and eventually committed suicide pulling out their swords in tears.
Because of their special status, they were killed not only with coffins, but also with a large number of funeral objects, and they were buried on the east side of the tomb of Qin Shi Huang. Archaeological excavations have shown that these 17 tombs were buried at the same time, and in some of them, ash traces left by the grave diggers baking fires were found, indicating that the weather was colder when the tombs were dug, which also basically coincides with the time of the event of the execution of the princes written in the literature. Therefore, experts judge that these tomb owners are likely to be imperial families or ministers who were killed, and the discovery of 17 tombs is also a historical witness to the court politics of the late Qin court.