The First Emperor
Stone armour
It seems that, for Qin Shi Huang, China’s first emperor, even the terracotta army was not enough of a defence against spiritual enemies. Closer to the emperor’s tomb mound, a pit was discovered in which a research team under Dr Duan Chingbo expected to find an imperial palace guard. But all they have unearthed are empty suits of stone armour – and no sign of any terracotta warriors to wear them.
Professor Jeffrey Riegel believes that the evidence points to an emperor increasingly obsessed with death and betrayal: ‘The Chinese historical texts make no mention of stone armour, so it’s amazing that we have found some. Mr Duan and his team believe that the burial of the armour may have something to do with the rituals surrounding the worship of the spirits of dead soldiers who had suffered violent deaths, whose bodies, which had been torn apart, could not undergo the proper burial rituals. In other words, they hadn’t had, in Chinese terms, a happy death. Something had to be done for them because, otherwise, they might become vengeful spirits. They might even turn against the first emperor himself, so here in this pit, something is being provided for them.’
So far, Dr Duan’s team has found more than 200 sets of stone armour in one small excavation. But this is just the corner of a pit that is as big as the one containing the Terracotta Army. Tens of thousands of suits of stone armour must have been made ready for the spirits of dismembered soldiers.
