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Terra Cotta Warriors and Horses
Brief Introduction
Qin Terra Cotta Warriors and Horses discovered in 1974, later on the condition
of the founding here built a large-scale museum and be opened on the National
Day in 1979.Qin Terra Cotta Warriors and Horses has opening up a world
rarity and been stirred home and aboard quickly. As a treasure, it was
regarded to be an ancient miracle and one of the most important archaeological
finds.
By right of its huge size, powerful scenes and superb scientific value
and art level, it turns out to be a great wonder to the audience and becomes
a popular tourist site. The ancient city of Xian with Qin Terra Cotta
Warriors and Horses Museum, it quickly became one of the most important
tourist cities. Domestic and foreign visitors have come to as well.
The world-famous Qin Terra Cotta Warriors and Horses is situated to the
east of QinShiHuang's Mausoleum that covers an area of more than hectares.
Although it is a traditional ancient treasure, still it is well surrounded
by green trees, blooming flowers and grass in large areas, where you can
feel delightful and enjoyable.
History
The first Chinese Emperor QinShiHuang, in order to prolong his power upon
the country, had begun to build his mausoleum that took a period of up
to eleven years to finish. It is speculated that many buried treasures
and sacrificial objects had accompanied the emperor in his after life.
It is said that workers and supervisors involved in its design and construction
were buried alive within the tomb. Some speculations say that the Emperor
was so superstitious and fearful that he had the necropolis built as a
decoy and was, in fact, buried somewhere else.
Discovering
In the early spring of 1974, a number of peasants found some ancient bronze
weapons and pieces of broken terra cotta armored warriors while digging
a well by chance. It is the place right at the northern foot of Lishan,
which lies 35 kilometers from Xi'an City. If without deep excavation,
it may just remained a tiny discovering, no one would expected that this
accidental discovery would prove to be one of the most significant modern
archaeological finds. It is indeed a wonder to human beings all over the
world for adding great understanding to China's history and meanwhile
unclosing a unique and majestic spectacle in front of the world.
Upon the small findings, the archaeologists explored an oblong-shaped
pit of Qin Terra Cotta Warriors and Horses. For deeper excavation, to
the north of this pit another two pits were found from the distance of
20 and 25 meters respectively. In term of their discovering time, they
were named as pit 1, pit 2 and pit 3 with a total area of 22,780 centiares.
Pits
Pit 1
Pit 1 is an oblong area with the length of 230 meters and width of 62
meters, which being the largest pit among the three. The south part is
a corridor of 60 meters length and 3.45 meters width, where stands three
lines pottery tomb figures with 68 ones on each line. The ten rammed partition
walls behind had divided Pit 1 into eleven circumscriptions. 38 lines
warrior figures arranged in column directed to east and every four lines
with four chariots in between. Such solider tomb-figures are all over
1.75 meters high with loricaes or campaign gowns on wear and bronze-colored.
All of them are life-like. They are probably the main body of the formation
and represent the principal force. There are altogether 27 trial trenches.
According to estimation, there will be 6,000 warriors and horses in Pit
No.1, most of which are infantrymen.
Pit 2
The Pit 1 is just part of the "underground palace army", there
still another two pits on the north. The Pit 2 takes up a total area of
about 6,000 square kilometers in L-shaped; the maximum length from east
to west is 124 meter and 98 meters south to north with a certain depth
of 5 meters. The main elements here are chariots and hundreds of cavalry
and shooter tomb figures. It is indeed a "special type army"
consists of different mixed military forces in four arrays. It is estimated
that there were over 1,000 pieces of pottery figures, 500 horse-drawn
chariots and saddled horses. The special layout of Pit 2 left us an impression
that in Qin Dynasty warriors and chariots are the major fighting forces.
Although the wooden materials have gradually decayed, the traces of tongues
and wheels could still be seen clearly. The bronze ones are remained intact
till now.
Pit 3
 Pit
3 is of concave shape of 520 square meters that located 25 meters to the
north of Pit 1 and to the west of Pit 2. Inside of the pit there are unearthed
one chariot, four terra cotta horses and 68 armored warriors. A 11.2 meters
long, 3.7 meters wide sloping entrance on the east, just on the opposite
a chariot and horse house. There are winging rooms on both sides of the
house, in which were unearthed 64 pottery figurines that quite different
from those in Pit 1 and Pit 2. They are arranged along the walls without
facing each other. And also quite strange that there is only one sort
of weapon here in Pit 3 called "shu", which had no blades and
are consideredto be used by the guards of honor. From what it show out,
we could concluded that the Pit 3 was acted as the headquarters directing
the powerful underground forces.
All the armies look
healthy and strong and have various kinds of facial expressions. There
is no doubt that at that time Emperor QinShiHuang was strongly determined
to wipe out the other six states and unifying the whole country. It is
the most significant archaeological discovering in 20th century. From
another point of view, we could conclude that Chinese people had possessed
high wisdom and artful skill early to 2,000 years ago. The numerous exquisite
made weapons, of which some are still so sharp as new ones. This indicates
that Qin Dynasty's metallurgical technology and weapon-manufacturing technique
already had reached quite a high level. In 1980, two teams of large painted
bronze chariots and horses were unearthed 20 metres west of the mausoleum.
It was listed by UNESCO in 1987 as one of the world cultural heritages.
And together with Terra cotta Warriors, they are called the eighth wonder
of the world. |
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