Why not break the wall between terracotta warriors in Mausoleum of Qin Shihuang?

In the tomb of Tan Thuy Hoang, among the terracotta statues, there are always high earth walls in order. So why do archaeologists not break or excavate those walls?

Challenge with craftsmen by tomb area and scale

According to the book "Chinese Archeology " by author Cao Quyen published in 2003. In the Shang Dynasty, the burial procedure of the aristocracy was very brutal, they often buried the whole family and even relatives. the tomb of the dead along with gold, silver and wealth that the dead once possessed at birth.

By the time of the Zhou Dynasty, this custom was abolished, instead people buried figures could be made from pottery or earth.

Inside the tomb of Qin Shihuang.

However, there is a problem that the higher the status of the dead (perhaps the emperor), the more the number of servants, servants, and concubines. And so it is really a challenge for the craftsmen to cast or make a human figure and thus the tomb request is huge.

By the time of Qin, Qin Shihuang even wanted to bring an "army". Therefore, it is not surprising that the tomb of Qin Shihuang has an extremely large area, the newly excavated grave is now only a part of the whole tomb. Archaeologists estimated this tomb area could be up to 78 times the area of ​​the Forbidden City.

With such a huge scale. Moreover, at the request of the emperor, each terracotta warrior will be simulated from a real person, the size, the face is not the same, the casting of the statue must complete the task and ensure the division It is essential to avoid relying on a warrior model and mistakenly cast more than one statue.

So they have to come up with a method to avoid this situation. And walls can be useful methods.

Tomb of Qin Shi Huang has an extremely large area.

Technical factors and social rules also cause the appearance of walls

One of the things that most modern and ancient people fear when digging even a tunnel is the problem of landslide .

It is very dangerous to dig a large tomb with the number of adults that occur in the tunnel.

So when casting terracotta warriors and tunneling, leaving the earth walls as a "natural pillar" to avoid this risk.

Moreover, these walls are also the guarantee of separating the rooms to place warriors in the tomb.

These walls are no more than three meters apart, making it ideal to secure a wall, while ensuring a room width. The material of the walls showed that both pine and wood were covered with straw mats, then covered with clay.

The walls between the soldiers create space like dividing into rooms.(Photo: Sohu.com).

In addition, along with ancient social class distinctions, the earth walls also show the difference between the backgrounds of soldiers, soldiers who were farmers, slaves or soldiers. will not be able to stand in the same line as the soldiers from the mandarins or nobles.

At the same time those who are low-level soldiers cannot stand on the same level with commanders and generals.

Experts claim that all terracotta warriors are coated with many colors but the impact of time has made most of the color fade.(Photo: Sohu.com).

Considering from the perspective of protecting cultural relics, once when discovered the terracotta warriors, each warrior was covered with layers of paint, with various colors, but the archaeologists had them exposed With sunlight, the paint is lost and only the terracotta layer remains.

We can see that terracotta warriors today only have earth colors while more than 2,000 years ago are much more colorful. This is unavoidable because of the devastation of time is also not small.

No one dares to guarantee the mining, impacting the walls will not cause consequences. Therefore, safety measures are selected, experts will wait until scientific and technological advances allow to decide the next step.

Not only do terracotta warriors, antiquities or ordinary walls need to be carefully guarded as priceless cultural property.(Photo: Sohu.com)

From the viewpoints of respecting the rules of the ancients and maintaining the authenticity of cultural relics, the reason for not moving or influencing these earth walls is reasonable, not to mention the influence on the Terracotta warriors when conducting excavations on the walls.

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