Wu Zetian (624 – December 16, 705), whose real name was Wu Jue (武珝) (徐), later renamed Wu (武曌) (武曌, in modern Wenshui, Shanxi), was a native of Wenshui (present-day Wenshui, Shanxi). Wu Zetian's life is full of mysteries, she is the only orthodox female emperor in Chinese history, and one of the oldest (67 years old) and the longest-lived emperor (82 years old) on the throne. She has left many unsolved mysteries in the world, and the most discussed in ancient and modern times is not only her wordless monument, but also her impregnable mausoleum for thousands of years - Qianling! According to the current version, Qianling is the only one of the imperial tombs of the Tang Dynasty that has not been stolen and excavated, because the several large-scale tomb robberies clearly recorded in history have not excavated the underground palace of Qianling. Why is he so impenetrable? Because it has undergone three large-scale tomb robberies, all intact.
The first large-scale excavation of Qianling was the Yellow Nest at the end of the Tang Dynasty. Shi Zai Huang Chao once sent 400,000 troops to excavate Qianling, but only dug a ravine, without touching the real underground palace, at this time, the Various Qin King's armies of the Tang Dynasty gathered to counterattack Chang'an, Huang Chao saw that the situation was no longer right, had to abandon the idea of robbing the tomb, and fled in a daze. Huangchaogou still exists today, just to the west of Shinto – which raises a question: Why did Huangchao abandon the obvious north-south Shinto and run to the west to excavate? At that time, the mausoleum floor buildings existed, and the location of the underground palace was obvious, why did Huang Chao turn a blind eye to all this?
Of course, folklore says that Huang Chao led an army of 400,000 to find the entrance to Qianling, not for any other reason, but for the opposite direction. Is Huang Chao too stupid? Fortunately, he was also a person who had passed the jinshi examination, and although he had fallen in the first place, he was not yet a person who was extremely stupid; moreover, judging from the few poems he left behind, he was not a person who did not learn and did not have any skills, how could a person who could even defeat Chang'an City not even know where the underground palace of Qianling was?
Therefore, I think that if HuangChao really brought so many people to rob the tomb, Qianling would have been turned upside down by him long ago, and just by relying on the existing Huangchao ditch, it would be self-deceptive to assert that the Huangchao pirates were in the wrong direction, and even that Qianling was not stolen and excavated.
The second person to come to steal the tomb after huangchao was Wen Tao, a local warlord during the Five Dynasties period, when Wen Tao, the "grandfather of the ancestors" of the tomb, served as an envoy to Yaozhou Jiedushi, he took advantage of his position, and the tombs of the Tang Emperors in Shaanxi were all patronized by him, including the famous Li Shimin Zhaoling, who did not escape, and the former dynasty books in the mausoleum, the handwriting of King Zhong, were all taken up by him one by one.
The most successful tomb robber in Chinese history is said to have encountered wind and rain for three consecutive days when digging the Qianling Tomb, and finally gave up timidly. This is just a legend, and the history writes: "Tao was in the town for seven years, and those who were in the territory of the Tang Tombs were excavated and taken from the gold treasures they hid." (Song Ouyang Xiu's "History of the New Five Dynasties", Wen Tao's biography).
According to the Zizhi Tongjian, "Wen Tao, the thief of Huayuan, gathered a crowd in Saga Mountain, plundered the counties of Yongzhou, and the tombs of the Tang Emperor were destroyed everywhere." Moreover, Wen Tao was not fighting alone, he also had an accomplice: "Hou Mowei, the general of Jingyang Town, was the same as Wen Tao in the Tang Tombs, and he stored something exotic." (Song Xue Juzheng's History of the Old Five Dynasties)
The record of the main history is "to know the excavation" or "to be found all over the place", which should be credible, because with an experienced habitual thief like Wen Tao, when he encountered some lightning, thunder, wind and rain when excavating, how could he stop there? Whether it is recorded in the history books or speculated according to the actual situation, Qianling is doomed.
The third is that the nationalist warlord Sun Lianzhong, under the guise of protecting Qianling, led his subordinates to garrison Qianling and used the method of real guns and artillery exercises to cover the strength of a division to illegally excavate Qianling. The soldiers used explosives to blow up many places, but they could not find the entrance to the cemetery.
Amazingly, the tomb passage leading to the Qianling Underground Palace was inadvertently discovered by several farmers who opened the mountain to take stones in 1957, and in 1957, several local farmers set off cannons to blow up the stones, inadvertently blowing up the tomb entrance, and the archaeological team carried out a simple excavation and judgment of the tomb, and the Qianling tomb was not stolen. Whether or not to continue to excavate is not up to you. Guo Moruo, a contemporary talent, wrote to the state three times to ask for excavations, and he just wanted to see if there was an authentic copy of Wang Xizhi's "Orchid Pavilion Preface" in the tomb. Limited to the technology of cultural relics protection is not passed, the prime minister said, 100 years will not be excavated. The cemetery was resealed.
In summary, in addition to the reasons for those superstitions and fantasies, I think there are three reasons why Qianling was not stolen:
First, the construction of Qianling broke the convention and adopted the burial system of "because the mountain is the mausoleum", and the mausoleum was hidden deep in the mountains, which brought super difficulties to the excavation of tomb robbers. Second, successive dynasties have made Qianling a key area for cultural protection and sent heavy troops to guard it, which has also deterred many tomb robbers. Third, Qianling itself has a superb anti-theft function, its tomb passage is set in the abdomen of the mountain, only this entrance, if you want to find a new hole to dig into the underground palace, it is difficult to go to the sky. At the same time, its only tomb passage is all sealed with boulders, and the gaps are actually burned with pig iron, so thousands of boulders are connected into one, so it is not possible for ordinary people to open the tomb passage.
Of course, in addition to this, there is another claim of theft, which is detailed in the following report:
Zhang Zhitian, a senior engineer at the Jiangsu Provincial Earthquake Engineering Research Institute who participated in the entire detection of the tomb of Empress Wu Zetian ——— Qianling, recently returned to Nanjing and told some behind-the-scenes news of the detection, believing that the tomb may have been stolen. The detection and study of the Qianling Mausoleum jointly conducted by the Shaanxi Provincial Cultural Relics Protection and Restoration Center, the Jiangsu Provincial Earthquake Engineering Research Institute and the Shaanxi Provincial Qianling Museum began in late April. The detection adopts precision magnetic measurement (GPM) technology to complete a total of three pieces of the eastern slope of the qianling south vein, the north slope of qianling and the western slope of the southern pulse of Qianling. 380,000 square meters of detection. The main results are: the width and length of the entrance to the Qianling Tomb Road and the tomb road building were basically explored, and it was found that there had been two partial collapses within the scope of the tomb. Zhang Zhitian said: The mountains around Qianling are magnificent and extraordinary.
However, measured down, the scale of Wu Zetian's tomb is almost equivalent to that of the average Xiao Wang, which is incomparable with the tomb of Tang Taizong Li Shimin. Wu Zetian's grandson Prince Zhanghuai's tomb is more than 100 meters long, and her granddaughter's tomb is also more than 80 meters long, while her tomb is only 63 meters long. Among them, 28 meters of detection data show that it is related to the patio and side chamber set up in the tomb at that time, which can be determined to be a martial tomb. When farmers excavated the mountain to chisel the stone, the tomb was found, and the archaeological department unveiled the top and saw the entire boulder and the iron nails casting, thinking that it had not been robbed. This time, Zhang Zhitian found that the entrance to the Wu Tomb Road is adjacent to the building boundary on the west side of the mountain, which is about 4 meters longer than the east side. Is this because it was chiseled against the mountain, or was it a later man-made collapse? This question is important to determine whether the tomb was stolen. In addition, behind the 63-meter cemetery is the burial chamber.
The current detection shows that there are two obvious collapses at the end of the tomb near the existing Qianling tomb chamber, which are about 15 meters long and about 3 meters wide. In Shaanxi, where there is little rain and the surface cover is not thick enough, in addition to the siltation and collapse of the burial chamber due to the unevenness of the building itself, it should generally be caused by human factors, and it is likely to collapse due to the concentration of a large number of pirate caves. Therefore, Zhang Zhitian said, some archaeologists believe that the Tomb of Wu has not been stolen and destroyed, and I am afraid that a question mark will be put.