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

Chapter 61 There Are Tombs Within Tombs, and Tombs Within Tombs: False Tombs, False Tombs, and Doubtful Tombs (1)
Doubts everywhere

What's the best way to prevent tombs from being stolen?Of course, it is to prevent tomb robbers from finding the real tomb.What is the best way to protect the tomb owner from being disturbed after death?Of course, it is to prevent the tomb robbers from finding the coffin of the tomb owner.As a result, people have come up with many ways to conceal the tomb, among which the most elusive tomb robbers are the suspicious tombs.In the vast and deep mountains, there are many tombs. I don't know which one is the real tomb where the coffin of the owner of the tomb and the rare treasures are buried.

Doubtful tombs are false tombs set up to confuse people. They are also the most common anti-tomb robbery method, that is, to conceal the tomb site so that the tomb robbers do not know where it is.It is said that the ancient mausoleums were not sealed or treed, and prominent signs were not set up on the ground. One of the main starting points was to prevent robbery.

Perhaps no one could have imagined that Kong Shengren was the first person to set up suspicious graves to guard against theft.The book "Dong Family Miscellaneous Notes" written by Confucius in the Song Dynasty records the suspected tomb of the sage Confucius: "There are five empty tombs in the west of the tomb of the first saint, all of which are made of stone. In the tomb, a white rabbit came out of the tomb, and the first emperor chased it, and it disappeared in Shibaligou, northwest of Qufu, and the people of Lu called it "White Rabbit Valley" because of its name." This historical material shows that after the death of Confucius, his disciples In order to prevent the opponents of Confucianism at that time from excavating the tomb of Confucius, five suspicious tombs were set up next to the tomb of Confucius to confuse those who tried to rob the tomb.At that time, Confucianism was just the opinion of a family, and had not yet achieved the exclusive status.Furthermore, not everyone agrees with Confucius' views, and there are still many opponents.In connection with this background, there is still a reason for the disciple to make a fake grave for him to confuse the tomb robbers.Regardless of whether such a legend conforms to the historical reality, in order to prevent the tragedy from happening, anti-tomb robbery must be considered.

However, the five suspected tombs did not prevent the tomb of Confucius from being stolen. Qin Shihuang still excavated Confucius' tomb 300 years later.

The anti-theft method of setting up suspicious tombs was popular in the Three Kingdoms, Jin and Southern and Northern Dynasties.During this period, warlords fought, ethnic minorities went south, local separatist forces came together, coupled with climate change, natural disasters, and plagues ravaged, making this long 400 years the most chaotic and troubled times in Chinese history.There are many thieves in troubled times, and this period is also a period when tomb robbery is prevalent.In order to prevent tombs from being stolen, people devise various anti-theft methods.Setting up suspicious tombs, this ancient anti-theft method was also adopted by people in the Wei and Jin Dynasties.

In terms of setting up suspicious tombs, we have to mention Cao Cao.The fact that Cao Cao set up 72 suspicious tombs is well known to the world, but we are still unable to determine where Cao Cao's real tomb is.

Cao Cao's main purpose of setting up suspicious tombs is of course to prevent tomb robbers.But it may also be related to his treacherous and suspicious character during his lifetime.

"Taiping Guangji" once recorded such a story: Cao Cao played a prank with his later enemy Yuan Shao when he was young.There was a family who got married, and at night the husband and wife worship together and enter the bridal chamber.Cao Cao told Yuan Shao to "stand guard" and sneaked into the master's house to peep at the bride and groom's bed.Unexpectedly, he was watching vigorously, and was discovered by the master, who shouted: "A thief has arrived!" So the servants of the master's house surrounded the garden, and Cao Cao was surrounded.But Cao Cao was not panicked at all. He pulled out a sharp knife from his sleeve and grabbed the bride with one hand. Seeing this, the master trembled and dared not move, but begged him to let her go.At this time, Cao Cao pointed to Yuan Shao who was hiding behind the tree and said, "The thief is here, why don't you go after him?" Yuan Shao turned around and fled after hearing this.The master also hurriedly took all the servants to catch up.At this time, Cao Cao let go of the bride and left as if no one else was there.

Cao Cao's suspicious character is not only due to the Romance of the Three Kingdoms, but also many historical materials can prove: Cao Cao has a fellow villager named Heng Shao, who used to have a personal enmity with him.After Cao Cao got his wish, Heng Shao pleaded guilty to him and knelt in front of the court.Cao Cao said: "Kneel down and let him die?" In the end, he was still killed. "Wei Shu Zhang Xiu Biography" records that one of Cao Cao's nephews was killed by Zhang Xiu. Later, in order to defeat Yuan Shao and get rid of his military disadvantage and passive position, Cao Cao had to let go of his grievances and recruit Zhang Xiu. thousand households.But once Yuan Shao was eliminated and the territory was consolidated, Cao Pi, Cao Cao's son, forced Zhang Xiu to commit suicide.Before Cao Cao died, he killed Zhang Quan, Zhang Xiu's son, to avoid future troubles.Cao Cao was suspicious of anyone who had old grudges, worried, and would not let them go until death. Therefore, "Cao Man Biography" said that most of the "old grudges" were killed by Cao Cao in revenge.

Cao Cao's naturally suspicious character was also reflected after his death.According to legend, on the day of his burial, all the city gates of Yecheng were opened, and 72 coffins were carried out from the city gates simultaneously from the four directions of southeast, north and south.Since then, the eternal mystery of Cao Cao's tomb has been suspended.Which of these 72 suspicious tombs is real?For thousands of years, there have been countless tomb robbers, but no one has unearthed the real Cao Cao's tomb.

It should be said that Cao Cao was quite successful in setting up a suspicious tomb. For nearly 2000 years, people have not figured out where his tomb is.People believe that Cao Cao's setting up of suspicious graves reflects Cao Cao's "treacherous" nature.Lu Ciyun, a poet in the Qing Dynasty, once wrote a poem satirizing: "There are many doubtful tombs in Zhangshuitou, like a mountain with 72 high hills. Zhengping is only three feet from the grave, and it has been buried in Yingwu Island through the ages." Zhengping is the character of Mi Heng, a famous scholar in the Three Kingdoms period. He was killed and buried in Yingwu Island in the middle of the Yangtze River in Wuhan.The meaning of the poem is that Cao Cao set up 72 suspicious tombs and tried his best.But Miheng has only one three-foot grave, but it has been safe and sound for thousands of years.Of course, today, Yingwu Island has been submerged by the river.

Before Cao Cao’s death, he told his concubines and kabukis to go to the Tongque Terrace to look at his tomb field in the West Mausoleum frequently, so the Qing Dynasty poet Cha Shenxing wrote a famous Qijue: “Distributing incense and selling shoes alone hurts the gods, and singing I don’t know where the bones are buried, but who are you looking at on the platform?” Ridiculous Cao Cao set up so many suspicious graves, where did his concubines look?

Yu Yingfu, a poet of the Song Dynasty, despised Cao Cao's behavior very much. In his poem "72 Doubtful Tombs", he wrote in a disgusted tone:
He bullied the heavens and ruled the Han Dynasty during his lifetime, and deceived others and set up suspicious graves after his death.

If you use your wisdom to die, you will rest, so there is no chance to go to Qiulong.

I don't doubt what people say, but I have a way to tell you.

As long as the seven tombs are exhausted, there must be a tomb to hide the emperor's corpse.

After all, no one is willing to spend so much effort to excavate the 72 suspicious tombs one by one.Besides, even if the 72 suspicious tombs were dug up one by one, can you be sure that Cao Cao's body was buried in one of the tombs?
In Pu Songling's "Strange Tales from a Liaozhai Studio", there is an article "Cao Cao's Tomb", which provides us with a clue to solve the mystery of Cao Cao's tomb.The original text is not long, so it is recorded below:

"Outside Xucheng, there is a raging river, and the cliffs are dark. In midsummer, someone took a bath, and suddenly, if he was cut off by a knife and axe, his corpse floated up. The last person did the same. He turned around and was surprised. The magistrate heard about it and sent many people. Running up the river intermittently, exhausting its water, you can see a deep hole under the cliff, with a wheel in the middle, and a row of sharp blades on the wheel like frost. Going to the wheel and attacking, there is a small stele with Chinese characters. If you look closely, it is the tomb of Cao Mengde. It is also broken. The bones are scattered in the coffin, and all the gold and treasures that were sacrificed will be taken."

As we all know, most of Pu Songling's "Strange Tales from a Liaozhai Studio" were collected from folk tales and legends.This "Cao Cao Tomb" must be hearsay, but it is also conclusive.It means that two people took a bath in the river outside Xuchang city one after another, but after entering the water, they turned into dead bodies and floated out. The bodies seemed to have been chopped by knives and axes.In order to find out the truth, the local officials ordered people to cut off the water flow from the upper reaches of the river. When the water came out, there were holes in the rocky cliffs under the water.People unloaded the wheels, went into the cave and found a small stone tablet with seal characters written on it. After looking carefully, they realized that it was Cao Cao's tomb.So people split the coffin and threw out the bones inside.All the gold and silver treasures in the tomb were taken away by people.

If this story is true, it can be concluded that Cao Cao's body was transported back to Xudu for burial, and none of the so-called 72 suspected tombs is true.

But this is just a legend, not enough.

Let us go back and look at Cao Cao's "Last Order".In the "Last Order", Cao Cao explained the location of his tomb in detail: "Buried on the west hill of Ye, which is close to Ximen Leopard Temple." It is not a lack of heart to disclose the specific location of his tomb for fear of people digging his tomb. ?

Cao Cao died in Luoyang, and the distance from Luoyang, Henan to Linzhang, Hebei was twice as far as from Luoyang to Xuchang.Since it was not buried on the spot, there is a possibility that Cao Cao's coffin could be buried in Linzhang, as well as in Xudu.

If this possibility exists, the stories recorded by Pu Songling are not entirely groundless.

Deng Zhicheng, a modern historian, provided another clue in his "Bone Dong Suo Ji": It is said that there was a farmer named Cui Laorong in Ci County. .He continued to dig and found a stone chamber with a stone door outside, and beside the stone door were the remains of many dead people.After the county magistrate Chen Xixian heard about it, he sent people to pour sulfur into the stone chamber, and then sent people in, and found that the walls of the stone chamber looked as if they had just been painted.There is a sarcophagus in the center of the stone room, and a stone epitaph in front of the coffin, which shows that it is the tomb of Cao Cao, Emperor Wu of Wei Dynasty.Prior to this, more than ten such stone chambers had been discovered nearby, but none of them had sarcophagi, so people believed that this was the real tomb of Cao Cao.

According to this record, it can be seen that this "Cao Cao Tomb" is small in scale and only accommodates one coffin. Although there are epitaphs as evidence, it does not look like the tomb of Cao Cao, who was already a king.Moreover, when Cao Cao was buried in February of the 25th year of Jian'an, Cao Pi had just succeeded to the throne of Wei, and the posthumous title given to Cao Cao by Emperor Xian of the Han Dynasty was "King Wu". The title of "Emperor Wu" was changed after Cao Pi became emperor.And this epitaph states that Cao Cao is Emperor Wu of Wei, either Cao Pi buried his father after he proclaimed himself emperor, or it was forged by later generations.Whether Mr. Deng's record is true or not has not been confirmed by the academic circle.

In 1985, a Lezhu stone inscription from the post-Zhao Jianwu period was unearthed in Anfeng Township, Anyang City, Henan Province. It was engraved with a statue of Doctor Ximen Bao, as well as the reconstruction time, area, and participants of the Ximen Bao Temple.This stone carving is currently the only one that reflects the situation of Ximen Leopard Temple.The post-Zhao Jianwu period was from 335 AD to 348 AD, about 100 years since the death of Cao Cao, and only 300 years since the death of Cao Cao in "Shui Jing Zhu". It was built in the post-Zhao Jianwu period.Archaeological experts believe that the Ximen Leopard Temple described by Li Daoyuan is the Ximen Leopard Temple rebuilt on the original site of the Ximen Leopard Temple during the Cao Wei period.

However, there are five Ximen Leopard Temples on the banks of the Zhanghe River in Linzhang County, Hebei Province and Anyang County, Henan Province. Which Ximen Leopard Temple is the Ximen Leopard Temple in the later Zhao Jianwu period?Regarding the location of the Ximen Leopard Temple, there is such a record in the "Shui Jing Zhu" that Zhangshui flows eastward through the south of Wucheng City, and then flows northeast through the front of the Ximen Leopard Temple.From this, it can be judged that the Zhanghe River flows from east to west when it passes through Wucheng.On the north bank of the Zhanghe River in the west of ancient Yecheng, there is an ancient city ruins, which is the Wucheng built in the Warring States Period.About ten miles away from the Wucheng ruins, on the south side of the Zhanghe Bridge in Fengluo Town, Linzhang County, Hebei Province, stands a stone tablet of the Ximen Bao Temple in Song Dynasty on a raised earthen platform. The inscription describes that this place was once a Ximen Bao Temple.

On March 1988, 3, the first page of "People's Daily" published an article titled "Unraveling the Mystery of "Cao Cao's 8 Suspected Tombs", which stated that the "72 Suspicious Tombs" were actually large-scale ancient tombs in the Northern Dynasties. The exact number of tombs is not 72, but 72.The full text of this article is as follows:

The well-known ancient tombs in Ci County, Hebei Province have recently been listed by the State Council as the third batch of national key cultural relics protection units.In the past, the ancient tombs that were considered to be "Cao Cao's 72 Suspected Tombs" in folklore have now been found to be a large group of ancient tombs in the Northern Dynasty. The exact number is not 72, but 134.

Ci County is located in the south of Hebei Province, and there are many tombs scattered on the land with a radius of more than 30 kilometers. The fourth chapter of "The Romance of the Three Kingdoms" records that Cao Cao "decreed to set up a suspected tomb 72 outside Jiangwu City, Zhangde Mansion, so that future generations should not let future generations know his burial place, for fear that people will excavate it." In recent years, archaeologists have Many investigations have been conducted on these "Cao Cao Suspected Tombs". According to the textual research on many epitaphs and tomb-shaped construction structures as well as murals, pottery figurines, ancient coins and other artifacts, from 424 AD to 578 AD, there were Eastern Wei and Northern Qi in succession. Ci County and Linzhang Ye Town were established as the capital, during which the relatives of the emperors and courtiers of the emperor were buried here, gradually forming a large group of ancient tombs.

According to the epitaphs unearthed in Cixian County, the owners of the tombs were also from the Northern Wei Dynasty, Eastern Wei Dynasty, and Northern Qi Dynasty. Therefore, it is recorded in "Cixian County Chronicles": "Since the Republic of China, most of the excavators who have been looted by people have epitaphs, and they are all princes in the Northern Dynasty. Important people... the theory of the tomb is self-defeating."

Since none of the real tombs of Cao Cao were found before, where is the real tomb of Cao Cao?
In April 1998, Xu Yuchao, a villager in Xigaoxue Village, Anfeng Township, Anyang City, accidentally discovered a stone tablet while digging soil in the open space beside the village.He didn't know at the time that this was an amazing discovery for the search for Cao Cao's tomb.The cultural relics workers in Anyang City, Henan Province have found a treasure. Because of the age, some of the handwriting on this stele has been blurred. Archaeologists rubbed the stele and carefully interpreted the contents of the stele. They found that it is an epitaph. The inscription, the content is the epitaph of Lu Qian, the son-in-law of the great servant in 4 A.D. in the Jianwu period of the later Zhao Dynasty.What excites the archaeologists is that the epitaph of Lu Qian clearly recorded the specific location of Wei Wudi's mausoleum for the first time.Lu Qian's epitaph records: "The tomb is 345 steps westward at Gaojue Bridge Mo, and 420 steps southward, so the northwest corner of Wei Wu Emperor's Mausoleum is 170 steps westward, and 43 steps northward to the famous hall of the tomb." Jue Bridge is the starting point. According to textual research, the current location of Gaojue Bridge may be in Anfeng Township, Anyang City. Then go westward from Gaojue Bridge for 250 steps, and then go southward for 1420 steps to the northwest corner of the Mausoleum of Emperor Wu of Wei. Go west for 170 steps, then go north for 43 steps, and you will arrive at the mourning hall of Luquan Tomb.According to the location records, the relationship between Wei Wudi Mausoleum and Luquan Tomb is about 250 steps, which is relatively close.If the distance between Lu Qian's epitaph and Lu Qian's tomb is too far, for Cao Cao's tomb, the records of Lu Qian's epitaph will lose the coordinate meaning.Archaeologists conducted archaeological investigations at the site where Lu Qian's epitaph was found, and believed that Lu Qian's tomb should be not far from the site where Lu Qian's epitaph was found.However, the strata in this area have been destroyed, and there is no trace of Lu Qian's tomb.With the discovery of the ancient stele of Lu Qian's epitaph, the scope of Cao Cao's tomb gradually narrowed.Cao Cao's tomb, which has been confused by unofficial history and legends, seems to be showing signs of clearing up.So where is the Gaojue Bridge recorded in Lu Qian's epitaph?
(End of this chapter)