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As the first and only female emperor in Chinese history, Wu Zetian is extremely well-known and influential. During her reign, she inherited the rule of Zhenguan and opened the prosperous era of the Yuan Dynasty, laying the foundation for the emergence of the Tang Dynasty, and although she was subject to certain controversy, she was still considered an emperor who was good at governing the country.
In 706 AD, Wu Zetian died of illness in Luoyang, and was buried in the "Qianling" of Shaanxi with Li Zhi, who was both the emperor and the deceased husband of Tang Gaozong. This is also the only imperial mausoleum in the history of Chinese feudal society where both husband and wife are emperors.
The scale of the Qianling Tomb is naturally extremely magnificent, the area of the entire mausoleum is close to 2.4 million square meters, in addition to the tomb itself, there are also the famous wordless tablets and the extremely mysterious 61 headless stone statues.
Naturally, such tombs have also been coveted by countless tomb robbers for thousands of years. However, no matter how hard they tried, the tomb robbery would eventually end in failure, because the structure of the tomb was extremely special and there were many unsolved mysteries. The most striking thing is the secret of the only 61 headless stone statues on the ground of Qianling.
What exactly do they symbolize? Why do they have no heads? Is it the way it was made, or is it destroyed by an external force?
These mysteries plagued countless archaeologists until a serendipitous discovery in 1971 revealed the truth.
Mysterious Qianling
Qianling is located on Liangshan Mountain in Qianxian County, Xianyang City, Shaanxi Province, and is the only cemetery in Chinese history where two emperors are buried together, so it is also known as "the crown of the tombs of all emperors in the past dynasties".
This cemetery was originally built by Wu Zetian to bury Li Zhi. According to legend, Wu Zetian chose this feng shui treasure under the advice of the famous astrologer Yuan Tiangang and Taishi Ling Li Chunfeng. At the time of construction, the treasury was quite full, so the scale of the Qianling Tomb was also very grand.
After the construction was completed, Wu Zetian buried Li Zhi, and when she died decades later, she was also buried here with her husband.
Now that the years have changed, the Qianling Tomb that has been polished by history has long lost its past magnificence. It is divided into two parts, above ground and underground, the main tomb underground has not yet been excavated, only five of the 17 burial tombs have been excavated, and the ground buildings have been almost completely destroyed, leaving only the many stone carvings outside the Suzaku Gate in the inner city.
In addition to the famous wordless monuments, two groups of 61 headless statues have also attracted the attention of archaeologists and many tourists.
The suspicion of the headless stone statue
The headless stone statues are engraved with inscriptions on their backs, indicating the region, name, and official position of the stone statues, and are located on the east and west sides of the Shinto outside the Suzaku Gate, with 29 on the east side and 32 on the west side, collectively known as the "Sixty-one Vassals".
They are similar in size and posture to real people, with different costumes and respectful and interesting dynamics. It is believed to be a recreation of the grand occasion of the "coming of all nations" in those years.
If we ignore the "headless" characteristics of the stone statues, perhaps they still seem a little "naïve".
Every visitor and archaeologist who delves into historical artifacts is curious about the reason why the headless statue is "headless". According to old photographs taken by the earliest missionaries of the late Qing Dynasty, these stone statues had no heads a hundred years ago.
Could it be that when they were created, they were "headless"? But why did Wu Zetian build a stone statue without a head? Or did someone destroy or steal their "heads"? Or was it a great earthquake that caused the statue's unstable head to fall? Or did the tomb robbers fail to rob the tomb and smash off the head of the stone statue and take it away as a "souvenir"?
There were various opinions about the reason for the "headlessness" of the stone statues, which set off a wave of discussion in the archaeological community, but there has been no definite answer for many years.
As the saying goes, if you have the intention to plant flowers and flowers, you will not bloom, and you will have no intention of planting willows and willows. In 1971, the secret that had plagued professional archaeologists for many years was accidentally found by two illiterate peasants.
The old farmer accidentally discovers the truth
In 1971, two local farmers in Shaanxi Province were working in the fields as usual, when suddenly one of them had a shovel in his hand, as if he had dug into something hard.
At that time, the land was mostly undeveloped, and it was possible to dig up stones and even bones. The peasant was not surprised, so he called in his companions to help, and the two of them dug with shovels, and finally unearthed an old but carefully carved stone head.
In fact, this kind of thing is not uncommon in Shaanxi, and the local residents have developed a strong sense of cultural relics protection. So, the two peasants hurriedly held the stone statue and sent it to the county cultural relics preservation office.
The experts of the Depository Bureau looked at it and felt that the material and age of the avatar were very familiar. When you think of the head, you will naturally think of the headless stone statue located in Qianling. The experts were surprised and delighted: could it be that this was one of the heads of the stone statues?
After thanking the two peasants, they hurriedly rushed to Qianling with the head, and after comparing them with the 61 headless stone statues on the east and west sides one by one, they really found that it matched one of them closely. Now, the secret of the headless stone statues is finally revealed: they are not "headless" in the first place, but are affected by external factors, and their heads have been "stripped off".
And the reason for their stripping is now gradually coming to the surface: in the past, most people thought that the stone statues had been vandalized, but if so, why did the heads run into the fields and be buried deep in the ground? If someone robs the tomb, it will not be abandoned, and if the villagers destroy it, they will not hide it privately.
At this time, the most likely theory is that it became the earthquake theory: the stone statues of the 61 vassal were made too old, and the production process was more coarse than the modern process, and the force point was very uneven, and the slender neck could not bear the force of the earthquake at all, so most of the stone statues were forced to "behead" in the devastating earthquake, and some of the stone statues fell apart.
And that earthquake is also very likely to be the Ming Dynasty Jiajing period up to 8 magnitude "Jiajing earthquake", Qianling is only more than 100 kilometers away from the epicenter of Huaxian, is likely to be affected.
However, because some of the headless statues appear to have traces of man-made damage to their sections, experts believe that not all of them were damaged in the earthquake, and some may have been destroyed in the wars of the late Ming and early Qing dynasties.
Since then, the mystery of the 61 headless stone statues has finally been solved reasonably, and all this was discovered by two farmers by mistake, which is really a miracle.
Information sources:
Exploration and discovery: the mystery of the headless stone statue of Qianling[OL].CCTV,2010-02-28
WANG Li. The mystery of the headless stone statue of Wu Zetian's Mausoleum[J].People's Life, 2017(4):1.