• Tombs—Windows to Ancient Beliefs
    Awake!—2005 | December 8

    • Decaying in Splendor​—With Company

      In 1974, peasants near the city of Xi’an, in China, were sinking a well. But instead of finding water, they found fragments of clay figures, bronze crossbow mechanisms, and arrowheads. Unknowingly, they had chanced upon the 2,100-year-old Ch’in terra-cotta army, comprising over 7,000 larger-than-life clay soldiers and horses​—all in military rank and file! A part of the largest imperial tomb in China, the Ch’in terra-cotta army is named after Ch’in Shih Huang Ti, the emperor who unified China’s warring states in 221 B.C.E.

      Ch’in’s mausoleum is essentially an underground palace. But why the terra-cotta army? In his book The Qin Terracotta Army, Zhang Wenli explains that Ch’in’s “mausoleum is a representation of the Qin empire [and was] intended to provide Qin Shi Huangdi [Ch’in Shih Huang Ti] after death with all the splendour and might he enjoyed during life.” The tomb is now part of a vast museum comprising 400 satellite tombs and pits.

      To build the tomb, “over 700,000 men from all parts of the empire were conscripted,” says Zhang. Work continued after Ch’in’s death in 210 B.C.E. and lasted a total of 38 years. Not all of Ch’in’s interred entourage, however, was terra-cotta. His successor decreed that Ch’in’s childless concubines be buried with him, resulting in the death of a “very great” number of people, say historians. Such practices were far from unique.