You can take it with you
( ... if you’re the Emperor ( of China, that is!
OnE day in March 1974, six brothers named Wang began to dig a well on land they owned in Shaanxi province, China. To their alarm, suddenly a head appeared out of the earth.
After a brief period of panic, they realised that it was made of terracotta. Shattered limbs and torsos of the same material emerged from the ground as they continued digging.
The brothers Wang had stumbled on one of the greatest archaeological finds of all time — the Terracotta Warriors.
Some of their more superstitious neighbours feared the worst. They thought the figures were those of demons linked to sickness and burned incense to protect themselves.
Word spread and, soon, the local, and later national, authorities became involved.
Today, more than 2,000 terracotta warriors have been revealed and it’s estimated that the total number could be several times that figure. They are part of an ‘army’, which includes 140 battle chariots and nearly 700 horses.
Since 1979, 90 million Chinese and 15 million foreign visitors have walked through the museum housing the warriors that now stands on what was to have been the Wang brothers’ well.
This month, an exhibition opens in Liverpool that features a selection of the terracotta warriors, so Edward Burman’s book on them is timely.
It is a serious academic work and not always an easy read. But it does tell us a great deal that is fascinating about the figures and the Emperor who ordered them to be built.
Astonishingly, the vast pits in which they were found are only part (and not the most important part) of an even larger mausoleum complex, which some archaeologists think may cover as much as 100 square kilometres.
It was created to honour Qin Shi Huang, the ‘First Emperor’. In the 3rd century BC, this extraordinary ruler united the six warring states of China into one empire. He built one of the earliest versions of the Great Wall. The very name ‘China’ in Western languages is thought to derive from Qin, the name of his clan.
The First Emperor was a man obsessed by death and the possibility of eternal life. He survived assassination attempts and conspiracies to kill him were regularly thwarted. His palaces were built with secret passages and hidden doors. The emperor’s movements were to be rendered invisible not only to live assassins, but to malign spirits.
He hated hearing conversations about death. His officials were afraid of even mentioning the word. He sought elixirs that would guarantee eternal life and regularly consulted magicians and alchemists. The irony is that his search for immortality may have led to his early death at the age of 49. Some of the potions he drank contained mercury — it’s possible the First Emperor may have died of mercury poisoning. He also believed that he would always be the emperor, whether alive or dead. And he was convinced the afterlife would be much like this one. So, even if all the elixirs failed and he did die, he would need palaces and soldiers and people to serve him. The Terracotta Warriors formed, in the words of one archaeologist, ‘ a magic army that would protect his tomb for eternity’. His companions in the next world were not all made of terracotta. In one area of the funerary complex, a pit was excavated that contained not only horse sculptures, but also the remains of real ones. These were fettered and had probably been buried alive, but it was not just horses that were sacrificed. One large tomb in the complex contained 20 bodies of women, all around the age of 30. In all likelihood, these were concubines. Qin Shi Huang may have arranged for large numbers (possibly hundreds) to be buried with him for his sexual pleasure in the afterlife. Given his obsession with secrecy, it also seems probable many of the workmen who laboured to build his actual tomb were killed so that they could not speak of its location. The existence of the First Emperor’s tomb was always known, but its precise whereabouts were not, until it was identified in the Ming dynasty (around the time of the Italian Renaissance in the West) as being under the mound that was later revealed to be at the centre of the mausoleum complex. At the time, it would have been unthinkable to excavate it and it still hasn’t been. If and when it is, it may well reveal treasures even more extraordinary than the terracotta warriors.