Mysterious face among 7,000 terracotta warriors: Appears for 5 minutes, 'disappears' immediately after excavation

After unifying the six countries, the first emperor of China - Qin Shi Huang, began construction of his mausoleum. More than 100,000 people from all over the country were mobilized to build his mausoleum over the course of 39 years.

According to legend, Qin Shi Huang once had a very scary dream. Many nights he dreamed that the ghost of his enemy came to claim his life, forcing him to use a sword to commit suicide.

After waking up, Emperor Shi Huang was extremely scared. He was worried that when he died, enemies would come to take revenge, so he immediately ordered the burial of a large number of warrior statues modeled after Qin Dynasty generals to protect them. guard when the emperor passes into the afterlife.

This magical terracotta army was first discovered in March 1974, when a few farmers in Shaanxi province accidentally dug up life-sized clay statues.

When newly excavated, the terracotta warriors and horses had brightly painted bodies. The warriors' costumes, skin, and weapons are all colored to resemble reality. However, among the 7,000 unearthed statues, there is a different warrior with blue skin, called the green-faced warrior . This makes archaeologists extremely confused!

At that time, because there was no preservation technology, experts had not yet had time to research and solve the mystery. All the statues had oxidized to a brown color. Experts were fortunate to be able to save a photo of the green-faced warrior before the statue's inherent blue color completely disappeared.

The only terracotta warrior whose face is green. (Source: NetEase).

Applying advanced technology of recent years, experts have restored the paint color and repainted the blue-faced warrior . However, to maintain this green color, the statue must still be wrapped in layers of fabric.

Why is there this statue?

After excavating this statue, there have been many opinions given to explain why the statue's facial skin is green, unlike thousands of other statues.

Some experts speculate that during the Warring States period, this was the image of a "sorcerer" in the army, so it had a strange appearance, to scare the enemy. According to records in history books, the Chinese also used to paint soldiers' faces in many colors in battle to scare the enemy, so this hypothesis is also relatively reasonable.

There is another opinion that the statue has a blue face but its hands are still pink, so it is possible that the craftsman who crafted this terracotta warrior was color blind and mixed the wrong color during the process. However, the process of making statues for King Qin is very strictly controlled, so this case is very unlikely to happen!

In addition, there are also experts who explain that green is also a way to express skin color and in itself has no special meaning.

The statue was once widely displayed. (Source: NetEase).

Until now, experts have not yet given a convincing reason why this terracotta warrior has a blue face. Currently, China has also issued relevant policies to ban the exhibition of green-faced terracotta warriors abroad.

China also limits the number of times this precious statue can be displayed at domestic museums. Up to now, the statue has been displayed 3 times and is currently located in the Shaanxi History Museum with a strict preservation and protection system.