History can't bear to look at the complete collection

Chapter 69
Xiang Yu's injustice for "burning Efang Palace"

In 221 BC, Qin Wang Yingzheng established the huge Qin Empire, and then he started three huge construction projects with the power of the whole country: the Great Wall, the Mausoleum of the First Emperor and the Afang Palace.Afang Palace is known as "the first palace in the world", and its scale is even more spectacular than the Egyptian pyramids.However, more than 2000 years later, when people are still lamenting the majesty of the Qin Great Wall and the majesty of the First Emperor's Mausoleum, the Afang Palace left people's sight prematurely due to the burning of the war.

After Qin Shihuang unified the country, the national power became stronger and stronger, and the population of Xianyang, the capital of the country, increased.In the 35th year of the first emperor (212 BC), the construction of the court palace, namely the Afang Palace, began in Shanglin Garden, south of the Weihe River.Due to the huge project, only one front hall was built during the reign of the First Emperor.

According to "Historical Records?Qinshihuang Benji" records: "The front hall, Efang, is five hundred steps from east to west, and fifty feet from north to south. Ten thousand people can sit on it, and five feet of flags can be built on the bottom. Zhou Chi is a pavilion road, from His Royal Highness to Nanshan, showing the top of Nanshan. In order to restore the Tao, cross the Wei from Afang, which belongs to Xianyang." Its scale is huge, and it is huge in labor and money.After the death of Qin Shihuang, Qin II Hu Hai continued to build.Du Mu, a poet of the Tang Dynasty, wrote in "A Fang Palace Fu": "The pressure is more than three hundred miles, and the sky is isolated. The Lishan Mountain is built in the north and turns west, and goes straight to Xianyang. The two rivers melt and flow into the palace wall. Five steps to the first floor, ten steps One pavilion; corridors and waists back, eaves and teeth pecking high; each embraces the terrain, fighting each other." It can be seen that Afang Palace was indeed a very grand building complex at that time.

After Chu King Xiang Yu's army entered the customs, he saw the luxury of Afang Palace and thought of the brutal rule of the Qin Dynasty.Du Mu once lamented in "The Ode to Efang Palace": "The people of Chu are burned, and the scorched earth is pitiful." The consciousness means that the fire of Xiang Yu, a Chu person, turned Afang Palace into scorched earth.People seem to believe in Xiang Yu's burning of Efang Palace.

This saying that has been circulating for thousands of years has made many people believe it to be true.But today, more than 2000 years after the construction of Efang Palace, archaeologists have pointed out that Efang Palace was never built at all, nor was it burned.

After more than a year of exploration and trial excavation, the Afang Palace archaeological team, jointly formed by the Institute of Archeology of the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences and the Xi'an Cultural Relics Protection and Archeology Institute, found that there were no traces of fire on the rammed earth platform of the front hall of the Afang Palace, and there were no traces of fire. Tiles and tile remnants that must exist in the palace buildings of the Qin Dynasty.Li Yufang, the person in charge of the Afang Palace team and a researcher at the Institute of Archeology of the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, said that after careful archaeological research, the archaeological team found that there was no such thing as the legendary Afang Palace.

Xiang Yu burned the Efang Palace is a saying that has been circulating for thousands of years, and many people believe it.Du Mu also blamed Xiang Yu for the sudden disappearance of Afang Palace in "A Fang Palace Fu". However, "the people of Chu are burned, and the poor scorched earth" may be completely a fantasy of the poet.Through archaeological excavation, experts found no traces of being burned by the fire at the site of the front hall of Efang Palace. Through archaeological work, it was found that what Xiang Yu burned was only the building of Qin Xianyang Palace, not Efang Palace.Xiang Yu recorded in Sima Qian's "Historical Records" that "burn the Qin palace, and the fire will not go out for three months" should refer to Qin Xianyang Palace rather than Afang Palace.

The legendary Afang Palace site is the site of the front hall that people saw later. There are many records in ancient documents, but from the excavation point of view, the front hall of the Afang Palace has only completed the construction of the rammed earth platform, and other projects have not yet started. .During the archaeological work, experts have neither found tiles, which are an indispensable building material for palace buildings in the Qin Dynasty, nor have they found the remains of palace buildings in the Qin Dynasty, such as walls, palace sites, pilasters, bright columns, pillar stones and corridors. And loose water and pits, drainage facilities and so on.Therefore, experts put forward such a point of view: Efang Palace only built a rammed earth platform with three walls in the east, west and north, and there was no Qin palace building within the area surrounded by the three walls. Therefore, Afang Palace was not built at that time.

In order to confirm the results of archaeological excavations, experts once again verified the historical classics.The time when Qin Shihuang ordered the construction of Afang Palace was 212 BC, but in 209 BC, he suddenly died of illness on the way out of the tour.Prior to this, the Afang Palace and the Mausoleum of Qin Shihuang were two major projects carried out at the same time. In order to bury Qin Shihuang as soon as possible, Qin II had to decide to stop the project of Afang Palace and rush to build the Mausoleum of Qin Shihuang.Counting from the day when Qin Shihuang planned to build Afang Palace, the project of the front hall of Afang Palace lasted less than 4 years in total.It is very difficult to complete this huge palace in just a few years.

Moreover, there is no such record in the literature of the Qin and Han Dynasties about Xiang Yu's statement that he burned the Afang Palace and the fire will not go out for three months, which may be a misunderstanding of ancient literature by later generations. "Historical Records?Xiang Yu's Benji" said that Xiang Yu massacred people in Xianyang, "burning the Qin palace, and the fire will not go out for three months."The place where the palace of the Qin Dynasty was burned is in Xianyang. Other chapters in "Historical Records" more clearly stated that the place where the palace of the Qin Dynasty was burned was Xianyang. "The Benji of Gaozu" said that Xiang Yu "slaughtered and burned the Qin palace in Xianyang", and "The Benji of Qin Shihuang" also said that Xiang Yu "slaughtered Xianyang and burned his palace".Qin Xianyang was the capital of the Qin Dynasty, and what was burned was also the capital palace. It was not at all the Afang Palace in Shanglin Garden, which was located south of the Wei River in the Qin Dynasty.

However, some experts said that the fact that the Efang Palace has not been excavated in the existing place does not mean that there is no Efang Palace, or that the Efang Palace has not been built. It may be that the front hall has not been completed, or it may have been built in other places.

Regardless of whether the Efang Palace is finally completed or not, it has been lost in history with the passage of time, but the endless imagination and shock left by the Efang Palace will continue.

(End of this chapter)