Shadow of the Tomb Raider: A Complete Record of the History of Tomb Raiders in China

Chapter 49 Resurrection, reheating: major tomb robbery incidents since the new era (1)
A group of thieves stole Tang Gongling

If you talk about which prince in ancient my country had the roughest fate, it would belong to Li Hong in the Tang Dynasty; if you talk about which mother in ancient my country was the most vicious to her son, it would belong to Li Hong's mother Wu Zetian.

Li Hong, the fifth son of Tang Gaozong and the first son of Wu Zetian, was born in autumn and winter in the third year of Yonghui (652 AD). In the second year, Li Hong entered the palace with his mother and was named Dai king.When Yonghui was named the prince in the seventh year, the prince Li Hong was still Wu Zetian's most beloved child.It was by relying on this first son that she really stabilized her position in the harem.Empress Wang and Concubine Xiao Shu, who were originally oppressed by her, quickly lost their positions as empress and concubine because of Li Hong's birth.Therefore, it is impossible for Wu Zetian not to love his son from the heart, not to mention that he is a benevolent, filial and sensible son.

"Tang Li" records: "Hongren, Xiaoyingguo, deeply loved by the emperor, has been promoted to prince since he was a prince, and he has paid homage to ministers and Confucian scholars. It has never happened..." Gaozong attached great importance to him and placed great hopes on him.He selected well-known ministers Li Ji, Xu Jingzong, Li Jingxuan, Liu Rengui, Xu Yushi, etc. as his assistant teachers.Li Hong was "deeply loved by the emperor and the queen", and he was allowed to participate in politics when he was young, so as to cultivate his political ability and exercise it in the practice of administration.For example, in the second year of Longshuo (662 A.D.), Emperor Gaozong "lucky that Lishan is warm and the prince is in charge of the country." Those who are all entrusted to the prince to decide."

Li Hong's benevolence, humility, and prudence were deeply loved by Emperor Gaozong, and the officials in the court also had a good impression of him. Although his physique was weak and his personality was mild, he could act like a man in many things and liked to fight against injustices.

The most important thing that Li Hong did in his life recorded in history is that he bravely visited his two sisters Xuancheng and Princess Yiyang who were locked in prison in private, and fought for their rights , Let them walk out of the cold palace and enter the palace of marriage.

The two princesses Yiyang and Xuancheng were born to Concubine Xiao Shu, but Concubine Xiao Shu and Wu Zetian had different views on politics, and together with the queen they lost in the power struggle with Wu Zetian. They were over [-] years old and still not married. Li Hongzuo asked Gaozong to allow them to marry, and Gaozong allowed them to marry.

It can be said that in the Tang Dynasty at that time, he was the only one who dared to risk offending his mother Wu Zetian and asked Gaozong to allow the two princesses Yiyang and Xuancheng to marry.

But there is no doubt that this incident involved Li Hong in the internal struggle of the palace.From then on, Li Hong began his tragic life.

In 675 A.D., Luoyang was full of flowers in spring.Tang Gaozong held a family banquet with Wu Zetian and Prince Li Hong in Hebi Palace.Li Zhi was very happy to see that his son had matured slowly and had done a few beautiful things recently, and he was full of praise for him.Wu Zetian was also very happy, and gave Li Hong a glass of wine to congratulate him on his achievements.Li Hong thanked his mother and drank the wine in one gulp.Then, tragedy happened. Li Hong suddenly fell to the ground, twisted in pain, with an expression of extreme pain on his face.He just struggled on the ground for a while, and then he was silent again. He was only 24 years old when he died.From then on, Li Hong was missing from Tang Gaozong's palace, and he was also the first member of the royal family to die at that time.

Emperor Gaozong was deeply saddened by Li Hong's death. He ordered the world to honor Li Hong as "Emperor of Filial Piety", and ordered that he be buried in Jingshan, Yanshi with "the gift of the Son of Heaven".Gaozong, the old man, personally made the "Rui De Ji Wen" for his son, wrote it on a stone, and stood it in front of the mausoleum.

Regarding the death of Li Hong, when Ouyang Xiu of the Song Dynasty compiled the "New Book of Tang", based on other historical materials, he wrote in "The Third of This Century": "In April of the second year of Shangyuan, the emperor killed the crown prince." "Biography The Third" writes: "In the second year of Shangyuan, from Xinghebi Palace, met Zhen (zhèn) and died, at the age of 24."

According to the "New Book of Tang", some experts have also done analysis and research, and believe that it is possible for Wu Zetian to kill the prince for political reasons, because the characteristic of court struggles is fratricide.There is no shortage of examples of these things in history.Tang Taizong Li Shimin fought for the emperor, so he killed his siblings in the Xuanwumen Incident.Before Li Hong, Wu Zetian fought for favor with the empress and strangled his own daughter to death.After Hong's death, he sent General Zuo Jinwu, Qiu Shenji, to force his own son, Prince Zhanghuai Li Xian, to commit suicide in Bazhou.Therefore, they believed that in order to clear the obstacles on his way to the throne of the emperor, Wu Zetian took the opportunity of visiting the Hebi Palace to deceive Gaozong and kill Prince Hong.However, many historians disagree with this view.As early as the Qing Dynasty, some people raised doubts about the theory that Wu Zetian killed his son. Qing Wang Chang (chǎng) "Jin Shi Cui Bian" questioned the stele of "Filial Piety to the Emperor Rui De Ji": "The emperor is tired and diligent in his later years, and the government is more than one decision. Afterwards, even if the crown prince accepts Zen, it is not difficult for the Queen of Heaven to restrain her son, so why did she invite the second princess to marry her and provoke the sudden (jù) desire to kill her son? This matter is suspicious." Another way of saying When Prince Li Hong went to Hebi Palace, he suffered from tuberculosis for a long time, and his condition worsened. Hearing this, he felt deeply uneasy, and as a result, his condition worsened again, and he "fell on his pillow and flowed", and finally "exacerbated the old disease", and finally died in Qiyun Hall of Hebi Palace on April 25, the second year of Shangyuan.

"Old Tang Book" contains: "In the second year of Shangyuan, the prince searched for the dead from Xinghebi Palace. At the age of 24...then, he was buried in Gongling in Jingshan, Goushi County..."

As we all know, the tombs of many emperors in the Tang Dynasty were mostly in Shaanxi, that is, in Guanzhong. Why is the tomb of Li Hong, the beloved son of Emperor Gaozong of Tang, located in Yanshi?In fact, this has a lot to do with Li Hong's mother, Wu Zetian, the only female emperor in Chinese history.

As a talented female politician in history, Wu Zetian was extremely courageous and courageous.When Taizong was in power, Wu Zetian followed Taizong for twelve years as a talented person. He heard and saw, and had a deep understanding of governing the government and developing production.

Later, Wu Zetian became the queen of Gaozong Lizhi through her talents and skills.When Wu Zetian was established as a queen, she advised the emperor on twelve things, one of which was to "persuade farming and mulberry, reduce corvees" and devote herself to the development of production.Then, in order to alleviate the political contradictions in Guanzhong and economic contradictions such as lack of life, with the courage of a statesman, he persuaded Gaozong to move his capital to Luoyang in 657 AD. also growing rapidly.

After Li Hong's death, according to common sense, he should be buried in Guanzhong, "close to Zhaoling".This is clearly reflected in the inscription "Filial Piety to the Emperor Rui Deji". The text says: "The land reclamation is waiting, and the land affairs are prosperous. If you return to Guanfu, you may lose your labor, so cutting off one's own kindness (que) will be a sign of others. The industry (que) thinks that it is said that it is buried in pearls and abass, and the Ming utensils are only made of tiles and wood. If one follows the original will, there will be no success."

Everything is relative. Although Wu Zetian buried Li Hong with what he thought was frugal, such a large-scale construction of the Gongling Mausoleum cost hundreds of millions of dollars, which led to two escapes of servants.According to the "New Book of Tang: Filial Piety to the Emperor Hong Chuan": "The mausoleum has cost a huge amount of billions of dollars, and people hate it. They throw stones to hurt the lawsuits of the department, or lead to death." "New Book of Tang: Wei Hongji Biography": "Prince Hongxie ordered Li Zhongji, the governor of Puzhou, to govern the mausoleum, and went to Tange when it was completed. It was not allowed to end, and it will be changed. The servants will not be dispatched after the expiration date, and the public will be angry, and they will burn the camp at night." These two historical materials are the "field affairs" Another way of saying Fang Yin, I am afraid that there will be labor and waste", is a discourse from a different standpoint.

Some experts believe that the construction of Gongling Mausoleum in Jingshan has something to do with its geographical location and beautiful environment. "Step by Jingshan, Songbai Wanwan." Jingshan is located between the Yiluo River and Wan'an Mountain. In ancient times, it was full of pines and cypresses, and it was lush. Cao Zhi, one of the seven sons of Jian'an in Jin Dynasty and one of the eight talents in the world, once lingered here and wrote the famous "Fu of Luoshen": "...Yu Congjingcheng, returned to Dongfan, and carried Yique on his back. , crossing Xuanyuantong Valley, Lingjing Mountain. The sun is westward, and the cars are almost exhausted. Er Nai tax drives to Henggao, moss to Zhitian, Rong and Yanglin, and flow to Luochuan..." Cao Zhi turned his back on Yi Que , Back to the vassal land in the east, crossed Xuanyuan, passed Tonggu, and climbed Jingshan.After arriving here, the red sun was setting in the west, people were tired and horses were exhausted, so I parked on the bank where Duheng grew, fed the horses in the field with sesame grass, and then looked around and played in the Yanglin area.

In the local folk of the Gou family, there is another legend about Gongling.

Wu Zetian entered the palace for the second time to assist the government, and it is said that it was all thanks to the help of Wang Zijin.Wu Zetian had just entered politics, and the civil and military ministers of the Manchu Dynasty were talking about it.A minister once said embarrassingly to Wu Zetian: "It is a skill to make the peonies in the back garden bloom overnight." Counting nine cold days, why do flowers bloom?Embarrassed, Wu Zetian fell asleep all night and had a dream in which a fairy boy was driving a crane and carrying a pot to water the peonies in the back garden.Before leaving, Wu Zetian asked him what his name was, only to hear the fairy boy say: "He lives in Goushan, and his name is Jin!" Then he disappeared. Before dawn, a court lady suddenly reported to Wu Zetian that the peonies in the back garden were blooming.Wu Zetian happily said to herself: "This is really God's will!" From then on, the future empress began to govern.After Li Hong's death, Empress Wu Zetian chose the mausoleum in Nanying Shengxian Temple and Jingshan Mountain near Xianhe Temple in the west. One is to accompany her great benefactor Wang Zijin, and the other is to hope that Li Hong can also ascend to immortality.

After the completion of Gongling Mausoleum, Luozhou specially restored Goushi County to manage "Gongling Mausoleum". form larger buildings.According to legend, the Goushi County Government was established in Gongling at that time, and Jingshan, which was originally peaceful, became lively and prosperous with Gongling and Crane Temple.

Gongling Mausoleum is located on the top of Jingshan Mountain in the southwest of Hutuo Village, Goushi Town, Yanshi City.It is surrounded by Songshan Mountain in the south, Luohe River in the north, surrounded by mountains in the southeast, and piled up in the northwest. The mountains and rivers are picturesque and the scenery is pleasant.

It is said that the site of Li Hong's mausoleum was personally selected by his mother Wu Zetian.One day, Wu Zetian led all the ministers to visit the tomb, and when he was resting on the road, he drove to Zhonggongdi Village, which is now Yanshi.The ministers who followed him asked Wu Zetian: "How high is the mound of the crown prince's Lingtai?" Wu Zetian replied casually, "As far as I can see from here." No matter how high it is, you can’t see it.” A minister thought of a way to make her golden words come true, and specially invited a "Mr. Fengshui" for this purpose. "Mr. Fengshui" said to Wu Zetian: "The queen will go north again. 5 li, it is most auspicious to look at the prince's tomb." Wu Zetian then moved to the present Antan, which is Antan Village in Yanshi.Before returning to the palace, the ministers asked Wu Zetian again: "How high is the land on the Lingtai?"It took migrant workers from three provinces, three years, and hundreds of millions of taels of gold to complete the Gongling Mausoleum as it is now.Coincidentally, if the sky is bright and clear, standing on the north embankment slope of the current Antan Village, you can just see the tip of the Otsuka.

From this, it is not difficult to see how grand the scale and grandeur of the Tang Gongling Mausoleum built in those years was.It is said that the Shinto of Tang Gongling was more than 50 meters wide, just like a modern road.There are two rows of stone statues standing on both sides of the Shinto.The total length is more than 800 meters from the southernmost watchtower to the lion sitting outside the Beishen Gate. The Lingtai of Gongling is in the shape of a long bucket.The existing one is 164 meters long from east to west, 146 meters wide from north to south, and 23 meters high.After investigation, the surrounding soil of the Lingtai has been eroded by thousands of years of wind and rain and human reclamation, and each side has been lost about 10 meters. The length and width of the original seal should be about 180 meters and 160 meters respectively. The story of Changling, the Han Changling is nine feet high, which is 27 meters today. The Lingtai seal of Gongling is made of high-viscosity red glue soil, and it has been rammed to make it hard and dense. After more than a thousand years of wind and rain erosion, its height has only lost 5 About meters, basically maintained the original appearance.

Gongling is commonly known as "Prince Tomb".The cemetery sits north and faces south, with a square plane, neat architectural planning, 440 meters in length and width, surrounded by original sacred walls.

According to the cultural relics drilling, the wall foundation is still well preserved, the foundation groove is 1 meter wide, and the reddish-brown raw soil is rammed.There are corners at the four corners of the sacred wall.There is a masonry wall foundation below the ground, and a rammed earth platform above the ground, which is 3 to 4 meters high and more than 10 meters long and wide.There were turret buildings in the four corners of the cemetery.In the middle of the four god walls, there are god gates, which are used to refer to Qinglong, Baihu, Suzaku and Xuanwu.

The tomb of Gongling is in the shape of a bucket, 163 meters long, 147 meters wide and 50 meters high.The layout of the entire mausoleum is extremely strict.On the side of the mausoleum is a stele of "The Story of Filial Piety to the Emperor Ruide" written by Tang Gaozong himself. It is 6.1 meters high, 1.95 meters wide, and about 0.4 meters thick. It has 33 lines of 82-89 characters each.50 meters from the northeast corner of the cemetery, there is a cone-shaped earth mound, which is the tomb of Empress Ai, commonly known as "Niangniang Tomb".There are 40 small mounds around the mausoleum, which are the gates and turrets of that year.The Nanshen Gate is 50 meters wide, and 13 meters outside the gate, there are a pair of standing lions, three pairs of stone figures, a pair of Pegasus and a pair of Huabiao, and a pair of sitting lions outside the gates of the other three gods.

Tang Gongling Mausoleum is different from Zhaoling Mausoleum, Qianling Mausoleum and other mausoleum rules that "according to the mountain is the mausoleum". Instead, the mausoleum is built on the flat ground with reddish-brown soil, "the tomb is the mausoleum".In recent years, with the research of archaeologists, the mysterious veil of Tang Gongling has been gradually unveiled. According to experts' research, the red plastic soil used to ram the Lingtai is not the local soil of Gou's family, but from 50 kilometers away from the southeast. This is a Huge project.Think about it, even according to the current scale, Gongling Mausoleum is 164 meters long from east to west, 146 meters wide from north to south, and 23 meters high. The Xingsha in the underground palace of Gongling is passed from person to person and person to person from the Yiluo River 50 miles away to Gongling, and it is fried and poured in. How big is the transportation work?

In fact, as a mausoleum with a regular layout, Gongling Mausoleum is also a well-preserved mausoleum of the Tang Dynasty in my country. The combination of large-scale stone carvings in Gongling Mausoleum created a precedent for the institutionalization of stone carvings in Tang Dynasty imperial mausoleums. , The image is vivid, reaching the state of expressing spirit with form and having both form and spirit.It can be called the crown of stone carvings in the tombs of the Tang Dynasty in the Central Plains.Reflecting the majestic style of the Tang Empire, it is the only group of mausoleum carvings of royal standard quality in the heyday of the Tang Dynasty in Henan. It has become an important basis for investigating the regulations of the Tang Mausoleum, and it is also a valuable material for studying ancient Chinese stone carving art.

Not far from the left front of Gongling Mausoleum, there is a small square cone-shaped earth mound, which is the tomb of Princess Li Hong, commonly known as "Niangniang Tomb".After Li Hong's violent death, the crown princess was shocked by the bad news and was heartbroken. She also followed Li Hong and was named Empress Ai.The tomb of Empress Ai is located 40 meters northeast of Lingtai. It is square and conical, about 50 meters long and 13 meters wide, and [-] meters high.

Years are long, vicissitudes of life.The majestic, magnificent and resplendent palaces in Luoyang, the eastern capital of the Tang Dynasty that were once in great prosperity, have all been wiped out with the passage of time, but Gongling has been completely preserved.

Although Li Hong's tomb was robbed several times by tomb robbers, none of them were stolen.During the Republic of China, a group of tomb robbers brought tools and came to Gongling Mausoleum in an attempt to rob the tomb.They decided to start digging right in the middle of the seal, thinking that this would be the fastest way to reach the underground palace.However, just after the hole was dug more than ten meters deep, a puff of yellow smoke suddenly came out of the hole, and then the hole collapsed. All the people who dug inside were buried alive, and none of them escaped.The tomb robbers who were responding outside the entrance of the cave were terrified, thinking that Li Hong was enraged by their tomb robbery, and his spirit collapsed the cave, so he fled.In fact, let’s analyze it now, because the sealing soil of Gongling Mausoleum is made of yellow sand, and the yellow smoke is just the dust formed when the sand collapses.The sand is fluid, so naturally it cannot withstand too much pulling force, so it collapsed halfway through the tomb robber's cave.

This should be said to be its luck, but luck has not always been with Gong Ling.The tomb of Empress Ai, an important burial tomb of Gongling Mausoleum, was stolen. This happened in 1998, and a person named Zhang Shaoxia took the lead.

Zhang Shaoxia has long heard about the large number of funeral objects in Gongling Mausoleum, and has been coveting it for a long time. However, Li Hong's mausoleum cannot be easily obtained because of the protection of quicksand, so he targeted the tomb robbery at the mourning man next to him. Queen's Mausoleum.He believes that since Li Hong's mausoleum has a lot of burial objects, his wife died as a martyr, and she will be buried in a beautiful manner, and the treasures in the mausoleum must be moved.Moreover, the Mausoleum of Empress Ai does not have so many anti-theft measures, so it is easier to get it.

On the night of January 1998, 1, that is, the 21rd of the twelfth lunar month, the nearby villages, large and small, were immersed in the joy of the festival, but Zhang Shaoxia and several of his cronies, Xu Erxing, Liu Kejun, Liu Jianghai, Song Yanjun, and Fan Weimin, took the early Prepared tools, such as rakes, ropes, shovels, sacks, etc., quietly came to the tomb of Empress Ai.

Taking advantage of the darkness that night, Zhang Shaoxia drove the six people to a prefabricated board factory in Guxian Town with ropes, rakes, and shovels prepared by Liu Jianghai. On the south side of the queen's tomb, a robbery plan was implemented.After the car stopped, six people jumped out of the car. They took shovels and dug in an open space.This open space is in the Tang Gong Mausoleum, a national cultural relic protection unit, and it is one of the tombs of the imperial concubine...

However, the high-quality tomb project of the Tang royal family temporarily hindered their plans: the soil was so hard that digging could not be carried out at all.Then, on the night of the 22nd and 23rd, they carried out excavations separately, but they were still unsuccessful. After repeated discussions, they decided to use blasting technology to carry out the excavation. On the night of January 1th, they carried wires, explosives, detonators, detonators, scooping shovels and other crime tools, turned off the lights, and sneaked to the south side of Queen Ai's Mausoleum in the dark, using modern blasting techniques such as compression blasting to rob and excavate. ", with a dull explosion, the tranquility of the prince's tomb that had been sleeping for thousands of years was broken, and the tomb of Queen Ai of Tang Gongling was blasted open...

(End of this chapter)