In Xi'an we went to see the Terra Cotta warriors!!! I was so excited! We first went to Pit 1, which was in a huge hanger about the size of 2 football fields!! This part of the tomb of the first emperor of China, Qin Shi Huangdi, was set as a unit of soldeirs ready for war. All of these soldiers were to be brought into the afterlife of the emperor himself!! Also it's said that he buried most of his concubines and all of the master engineers alive inside the tomb!! Pit 2 was set as the armies camp, with kitchens, chariotts and standing and kneeling soldiers and archers. Pit 3 was set as the command center for all of the army!! Most of the statues though are missing their heads, because in theory, rebels took the heads as a sign of ritual decapitation. The final pit, number 4, had everything ready to be put in it, but didn't actually have any terra cotta soldiers in it. Theories state that this was supposed to be a battle seen, and that workers were working on his tomb well after Emperor Qin's death before the establishment of the Han dynasty!! All these satellite tombs are about 1 mile from the central burial mound were Qin was buried. It is said, and might be the next Indiana Jones movie, that in his burial chamber he had 3 different palaces made underground, with the map of china on the floor, and the map of the heavens on the ceiling. It's alsomsaid that the rivers of China were represented by liquid mercury, and the stars diamonds!!! No one has ever seen inside the tomb, because of recent Chinese laws inhibiting the excavation of burial mounds, and the fact that we do t have the right technology to preserve the artifacts inside the tomb, because most of the objects that are that old will disintegrate when they hit regular air!!! When the mound was completed, it had 2 different walls around it and a permanent garrison to protect the tomb from looters. Alright, goodnight!!! Ray
No comments:
Post a Comment