The First Emperor
Professor Jeffrey Riegel of the University of California, Berkeley, on the emperor’s necropolis …
Here we are on top of the burial mound of the first emperor of China. Buried beneath our feet – perhaps 300 feet or more below us, no one can really say – are the remains of Qin Shi Huang in his crypt. The tomb mound is situated in a beautiful spot halfway between the Lishan Mountains to the south and the Wei river to the north. According to traditional Chinese cosmology and what later would be called feng shui – that is, locating a house or tomb in a good place – this would be considered an ideal spot.
East, west, north, south
The tomb mound is perfectly oriented with respect to the four cardinal directions. Especially important is the axis of west to east. The east is crucial because it is, of course, from there that the sun rises, and it was towards the east that the emperor regularly travelled in his search for longevity. This was because the east is associated with the rising sun, spring, new life. There were gods in the east to whom the emperor would pray in the hope of getting an extension of his life, and so we believe that, as he lies in the tomb beneath us, he is facing towards the east. And it’s towards the east again that the great Terracotta Army is situated, as an honour guard, as a protection against any kind of encroachment from that direction.
The burial mound isn’t just a pyramid, a high place. We know from the earliest accounts that the emperor intended to have himself placed within what looked like a natural mountain, covered with cypresses and pines – symbols of longevity within the Chinese tradition. And according to early beliefs, there were immortals within mountains, so by having his mountain be part of the great range of the Lishan, he would be able to correspond with those figures. And his mound also overlooks the Wei river, one of the great tributaries of the Yellow river, which runs through the old homeland of the Qin. The emperor’s ancestors knew this river, they came from its wellsprings.
So his mound is placed between the mountains that reach up to the sky and the deep river with its dragons floating in the depths. He’s at the centre of the universe.
The search for immortality
In the later years of his life, the emperor had quite clearly reached the pinnacle of power and had as much wealth as one could possibly accumulate, but death represented the loss of all of that. So he wanted to take steps to ensure that he would keep his power and wealth. That’s the reason for the great necropolis that he created, because it would continue to provide him with all the trappings of power and the protection that someone of his status required.
He also became obsessed with the search for immortality. He surrounded himself with magicians, shamans and doctors, all of whom, awed by his power and fearful of the punishment that would come to them if they didn’t deliver, promised him elixirs, drugs and the opportunity to encounter those whom, they claimed, possessed the secrets of immortality. They took him on journeys to the east, along the coast of China where, they said, he might encounter such beings or find the magical herbs and substances he needed. But, at the same time, he was building his tomb as an insurance policy.
Larger than life
What we previously knew about the first emperor mostly came to us from early historical sources, some of questionable authenticity and accuracy. We also possessed numerous legends and stories. The only physical remains of him that one could point to were those of the burial mound. But we couldn’t get inside it and, indeed, there were still some sceptics who questioned whether this was indeed the first emperor’s burial mound, whether the various tales told about him were true.
The early histories are filled with stories of the emperor’s excesses. We always regarded these stories as biased in some way, as criticisms and warnings to later emperors – that they shouldn’t go down that path of excess. So when we read the accounts of how Qin Shi Huang prepared his burial, we were equally sceptical about their truthfulness. After all, they said that the tomb was dug so deep that the excavators had to reach through three separate springs of water. And only after they had cleared away all this ground water was the pit fully prepared, which involved creating an enormous vault of bronze slabs.
On the floor of the vault was a map of Qin Shi Huang’s entire empire: all of China, the Yellow, Yangtze and Wei rivers, all the streams that run into those three rivers, the great ocean. And, the texts said, these rivers and streams and the ocean were filled with quicksilver, liquid mercury. There was some kind of mechanism that kept the mercury flowing in perpetuity, a kind of water clock. As long as it kept running, the emperor would continue to exist in his enclosed world.
What we knew about the emperor from the historical texts and legends was a person who seemed larger than life, almost impossibly large for an historical figure. We knew that, of course, he had accomplished the unification of the empire, that after 600 or 700 years of warfare, this individual finally pacified all the ‘warring states’. Yet how did he do it? How could such an enormous historical personage exist? That we weren’t sure of.
The truth behind the tales
Then, in 1974, the pit containing the Terracotta Army was discovered, and we began to see that, yes, there was some truth to these stories. If an individual could take with him in death a terracotta army of that size – 6,000 figures at first, then 7,000, then 8,500, and as of the present date, we don’t really know how many figures were created – then, yes, we do think he could have unified all of those warring states. And those stories of grandiose expenditure, of excesses, of travelling far and wide throughout his empire, all that now suddenly rang true.
The Terracotta Army was placed in three separate pits, roughly a kilometre to the east of the tomb. It was Professor Yuan, the former director of the museum, who made the link between the burial mound and the figure pit, but it remained a puzzle, a conundrum – why would the army be buried so far away from the first emperor’s burial mound?
And then it turned out that it’s not far away at all, that the burial mound is, in fact, at the centre of an enormous necropolis, an above-ground and underground city for the first emperor – a replica of his capital at Xianyang. He duplicated virtually everything he had there, so that those things would surround his burial mound, making it a palace at the centre of a great city.
He replicated not only his palace but also an imperial quarter filled with the offices of his bureaucrats and administrators. Beyond that was another wall, so there was also a city for the general population. To the north of the tomb, he built a pleasure park containing an enormous pond with geese, ducks and swans, all of them exact replicas of the real thing, but done as magnificent bronze pieces.
Metamorphosis
The army was placed there largely as a measure of defence against spirit enemies, if you will, but that was only one part of the city complex that he created for himself. It’s clear from this, and from what we are coming to understand about ancient Chinese concepts of death, that the ancients didn’t believe that death was an end, a conclusion. Instead, it was a crucial moment of transformation, of metamorphosis. There would still be a kind of existence, but it would be in another realm, not above the ground but below it, where perhaps different rules applied, where you had an army that was made of clay, where you had swans, geese and your chariots and the horses that pulled them all made of bronze.
The first emperor believed that, after he was buried in his tomb mound, he would continue to exist in some sense. He still needed to practise the arts of longevity; he still needed his cinnabar [mercuric sulphide] pills so that he could extend his life. We speak of a sort of post-mortem immortality, and this is what the emperor had prepared for himself.
