A thousand-year-old Liao Dynasty tomb was found at the foot of Turki Mountain in Tongliao City, Inner Mongolia, the burial chamber was simple but the burial products were extremely luxurious, and a large amount of mercury was found in the bones of the tomb owner. So who is the owner of the tomb, why does mercury appear in the bones, and does the owner of the tomb hide some secrets that are not known?
One day in March 2003, workers at the Turki Mountain Quarry in Tongliao City, Inner Mongolia, lay down explosives to mine stones. As the rocks crumble, some strange stones are revealed, and a boulder piled up on a stone wall is obviously not naturally formed. The appearance of strange stone walls soon spread in the quarry, and everyone was speculating, what exactly were these strange stones? The quarry was immediately shut down, and the leaders also reported the matter to the public security organs and the staff of the municipal museum. At this time, no one thought that the discovery of the strange stone wall would reveal an unknown and earth-shattering secret.
After receiving the report, the public security organs and archaeologists immediately rushed to the scene. After preliminary observations, archaeologists speculated that it might be an ancient tomb, the tomb passage is about 30 meters long, and the west side of the tomb has been destroyed. What kind of tomb would this be? Everyone was very much looking forward to it, and the excavation of the tomb officially began ten days later. First of all, starting from the cleaning of the tomb, the road leading to the burial chamber is called the tomb road, which is generally slope-shaped, and this tomb passage has become the key information for archaeologists to judge the age of the tomb. In the Tongliao area, except for the Liao Dynasty tombs, there are no tombs. More than 1400 years ago, the Khitan as a people in northern China appeared in the Book of Wei. At the height of the Liao Dynasty, its territory stretched northeast to Sakhalin Island, north to the Shileka River in central Mongolia, west to the Altai Mountains, south to the Haihe River in present-day Tianjin, and north to Baxian County in Hebei Province. The Yanmen Pass in Shanxi Province bordered the Northern Song Dynasty and confronted the Song Dynasty, which ruled the Central Plains at the time, forming a confrontation between the North and the South Dynasties, but the empire that dominated northern China at that time disappeared like a mystery 200 years later, along with the texts they founded. Due to the little information left by the Khitan people, people can only understand this steppe people of a thousand years ago through the excavation of tombs in the liao dynasty in the past. Tongliao, where the tomb was found, is the origin of the Khitan people, if this tomb is really a Khitan person, then what kind of Khitan story will it bring us?
After a month of excavation, the tomb passage was finally fully revealed, and at the end of the tomb was a huge sealed stone. The form of the early Liao Dynasty tombs was the same as that of the Tang tombs and the Song tombs, and the appearance of the sealing stone made experts more convinced that the owner of this tomb must be a Khitan nobleman. Everyone can't wait to open the sealing stone, but behind the sealing stone is a tomb door, and there is still more than one meter of silt piled up between the tomb door and the sealing stone, and the archaeologists accidentally found many copper bells of different sizes when cleaning the silt. Where the epitaphs had originally appeared, tongling was found, where did these brass bells come from? But what worries people the most at the moment is whether the tomb has been stolen. In the history of more than 1,000 years ago, the Liao Dynasty tombs have been stolen on a large scale many times, so that there are very few Liao tombs that are completely preserved today. Because the door lock has rusted, the archaeologists can only remove the tomb door and the door frame together, and they look through the gap with the faint light of the flashlight to the tomb room, and the scene in front of them is shocking. Inside is a bright red coffin, in the previous Liao Dynasty tomb excavations, Liao Dynasty nobles were generally buried directly on the corpse bed, and few coffins appeared.
The tomb of Princess Chen Guo, excavated in 1988, does not have a coffin, and the princess and her father and horse lie flat on the corpse bed. So why does this tomb on Mount Turki have a colorful coffin, and is it a Central Plains person buried here? However, just as the archaeologists were making a second observation of the burial chamber, they suddenly found that a golden phoenix was depicted on the coffin. As the cleaning work continued, the archaeologists finally entered the burial chamber, which looked a little simple, but the burial items of the owner of the tomb stunned the people present. On the left side of the burial chamber, a pair of gilded and silver saddles was first cleared, and on this saddle appeared a phoenix again, but even more surprisingly, there was a dragon carved on a silver box. Pieces of exquisite funerary objects are constantly separated from the dirt, but the epitaph that the archaeologists have been looking forward to has never appeared. Epitaphs usually record the name, place of origin and life of the deceased, etc., and epitaphs are usually an important basis for archaeologists to determine the age of the tomb and the identity of the owner of the tomb. Due to the limited conditions at the excavation site, archaeologists decided to seal the coffin and transport it to the Archaeological Institute before excavating. The coffin is parked in a laboratory with constant temperature and humidity, and in addition to the phoenix, the coffin is covered with brass bells on its edge.
After the preparations were ready, the experts began to remove the coffin lid, but what everyone did not expect was. Inside the coffin, there is also an inner coffin, and after the lid of the inner coffin is lifted, the scene inside the coffin is displayed in front of everyone. The owner of the tomb was wrapped in silk fabrics, and the experts decided to first use X-ray equipment to investigate the owner of the tomb. From the point of view of the pelvic pubic bone, the deceased was a woman with well-preserved upper body bones, and a cross-shaped band was found on the head of the deceased. Immediately afterward, many large and small spots with no regularity were found on the chest of the deceased. Gold needles and bronze bell-like objects were also found at the ankles. In order to uncover the truth, experts slowly removed the silk fabric from the head of the tomb owner. As the veil lifts, the cross-shaped bag that appears in the X-ray machine reveals its true face, a headband made of gold with the same phoenix motif on it. But to the surprise of the experts, the color of the skull of the owner of the object shows an unusual black color. Judging by the teeth, the deceased was about 20 years old, what did the young woman go through before she died, and why did she die in her youth?
However, in the next excavation, each bone extracted by the expert from the upper body of the tomb owner was pitch black, and some were even darker than the color of the skull. Excavations continue, and the ornaments worn on the tomb's owners include onyx necklaces, gold bracelets and gold rings, all of which are extremely luxurious and exquisite. Just as the experts were sorting out the bones of the tomb owner, an even more astonishing discovery appeared. There was mercury falling on the bones of the owner of the tomb, and the relatively pure mercury was enough to collect half a test tube. The discovery of mercury also explains why the owner's upper body is well preserved and why the bones appear black. Mercury is the only heavy metal in the liquid state of the metal, it can play a role in isolating from natural air, so that the membrane on the cell is integrated with it, if the cell membrane is not damaged, the cell can maintain the original structure, so that both inside and outside can play a role in preservative. So is the mercury in the owner of the Turki Mountain Tomb used to prevent embalming or the deadly real culprit?
Experts decided to use modern high-tech means to try to uncover the truth. The researchers made slices of the samples sent by the archaeologists and then placed them under the microscope for observation. The results of the first slice show that mercury was used to prevent embalming after the death of the tomb owner, but the second slice shows a completely different result from the first, and the two completely opposite results make everyone a little overwhelmed. A few days later, the medical personnel again sampled the bones of the owner of the Turki Mountain Tomb, and more than a dozen slices made by methods were waiting for the medical personnel to observe, but this time there was a breakthrough. Medical personnel found some hyphae of mold inside the slices. Mold growth requires nutrients, so mold usually appears after the organism dies. After death, before the skin and flesh decay and decompose, it is the best environment for mold to grow, and the poisonous filaments of mold observed under the microscope have died, but they have not been decomposed.
From this, experts deduce that after the death of the owner of the tomb, mold was produced when the body was not completely decomposed. Later, when mercury is poured into the carcass, it is immobilized along with the mold. Then, with such luxurious and exquisite funerary products and a large number of dragon and phoenix motifs, who is the owner of the tomb? Experts have speculated that the woman in front of her may be a Khitan princess or princess. However, during the nearly 300 years of Liao dynasty rule, there were 16 recorded princesses and 9 queens. According to the experience of previous excavations, archaeologists found that whether it is a Khitan princess or an aristocratic woman, it is generally a husband and wife burial tomb, but the Turki Mountain Tomb, a woman who seems to have a higher status than Princess Chen Guo, why would she be single? The burial chamber is simple and hastily buried, will the owner of the tomb be killed? If he was really killed, no epitaph seems to make sense.
Then, among the royal women of the Liao Dynasty, who were killed, at this time an expert put forward her own conjecture, she believed that the owner of the tomb may be Abori. Abori was the younger sister of Emperor Liaoshizong and the granddaughter of Ilhu Apaoji. In the second year of Tianlu, Abori and her husband Xiao Han colluded with the princes and ministers to prepare for a rebellion, but emperor Shizong of Liao preemptively executed Aburi's husband Xiao Han and sent his sister Abori to prison. Records record that Abri died shortly after his imprisonment. As the only sister of Emperor Liao, Abori had the dignity of a princess, and her identity was perfectly matched by the luxurious burial items in the tomb. And the tomb is so roughly built, it can be seen that the owner of the tomb was buried in a hurry, and even the epitaph did not have time to engrave.
Experts on various phenomena deduce that because Abori committed the crime of treason, it is impossible for future generations to elaborately build a mausoleum for her. And these exquisite funerary products were looked at by Liao Shizong for the sake of his own sister, and let her be buried. As for his brother-in-law Xiao Han, because of the rebellion, Liao Shizong could not let him be buried with his sister, so Abori could only lie alone in the cold burial chamber. Later, as for the true identity of the tomb owner, some speculated that she was probably the daughter of liao taizu Yelü Abaoji and Empress Shulu (Uighur). Judging from the gorgeous silk costume worn by the owner of the tomb and the excavated cultural relics such as gold painted lacquer coffins, a large number of gold and silverware and precious glassware, she should be a Khitan woman of extremely noble status. Of course, these are all speculations, and the mystery of the identity of the owner of the tomb has yet to be revealed.