Who Built the Qin Shihuang Tomb?

The Qin Shi Huang tomb was built over 38 years, and hundreds of thousands of people took part in the construction. So, who were these builders? And where did they come from?

The famous historian Sima Qian recorded in The Records of History that from the time Qin Shi Huang inherited the throne, he began to build a tomb for himself at the foot of Mount Li. And more than 700,000 people came here. It is also recorded in the book Han Old Rituals that those who built the tomb were “the criminal’s subordinates from all over the world”. The archaeological data found so far also proves the historical facts recorded in these documents.

Before the unification of the whole country, most of the people who participated in the building of the mausoleum came from Qin’s homeland. After the unification, the tomb builder should have been recruited from all over the country. The tombstone tiles excavated from the graves of the tomb builder near the tomb of Qin Shi Huang, the writing on the terracotta figurines and horses in the Terracotta Warriors pit, and the writing on the tiles excavated from the tomb, show that the builders of the tomb of Qin Shi Huang came from today’s Shandong, Shaanxi, Hebei, Henan, Jiangsu, Gansu, Hubei, and other places. Thus, it also proves that a large number of people were recruited from all over the country to build the mausoleum after the unification of the six states of Qin.

So, what are their identities? From the archaeological data found in the tomb of Qin Shi Huang, there should be four types.

1. The condemned. It is the person who served with a crime. This is in addition to the documentary record, we found in the tomb of the first emperor of the Qin Dynasty, the tomb of the torturers, the Qin dynasty stone field site found in the bones of people and torture instruments. These people wearing iron instruments of torture for the construction of the tomb of the first emperor to make the stone to serve the crime of torture.

2. The person who is fined money for breaking the law. A person himself was unable to pay the money, so he worked instead. Those who served the labor service were allowed to go home twice a year for farm work. In addition, they did not wear prison clothes or torture devices, which means that their status was better than that of a convict.

3. Official and private craftsmen. The construction of the emperor’s mausoleum required a large number of bricklayers, carpenters and craftsmen to make various burial objects. The large number of craftsmen found on the bricks and tiles and pottery artifacts excavated from the tomb of the First Emperor, for example, clearly shows that they came from the central government pottery workshops and the local pottery workshops in the counties.

4. Those who served regularly in labor service. According to the “Book of Han”, Qin people were required to serve and garrison the state for a period of time during their lifetime. During the construction of the First Emperor’s mausoleum, there were some such workers who served in the mausoleum according to the regulations.

To sum up, the torturers, the person who is fined money for breaking the law, official and private craftsmen, and those who performed regular labor service were the ones who built this imperial mausoleum