Mausoleum of Qin Shi Huang

Qin Shi Huang holds a central place in Chinese history for being the first emperor who united the country. He is also well known for his part in the construction of the spectacular Great Wall and his splendid terracotta army. To ensure his rule in the afterlife, this emperor commanded more than 700,000 conscripts from all parts of the country to build him a grand mausoleum as luxurious as any of the palaces he had in mortal life. Legend says that numerous treasures were placed in the tomb. As time passed, no one knew exactly what was put in the grand palace.

The mausoleum of Emperor Qin Shi Huang is actually composed of two parts: the tomb mound, a hillock above the tomb and the underground palace, the chamber containing the emperor's coffin. Most historical records indicate that the original tomb mound was 115 meters in height and 2,076 meters in girth. Exposed to the wind and sun for thousands of years, the mound has been greatly weathered down. The current girth is 1,390 meters and the base of the mound covers an area of 120,750 square meters. There has been a decades-long argument about why the mound's height dropped so sharply in recent years. Most of the people attributed it to the erosion from the wind and rain and to man-made changes.

According to the archeological team that went to the mausoleum, the height of 115 meters recorded in most historical documents was just a figure copied down from the unfinished due to a nationwide uprising of peasants. After the emperor's corpse was placed in the chamber, the tomb mound project began. Later, about half of the laborer were transferred to the construction site of another palace building. When the peasant army approaches the mausoleum of Emperor Qin Shi Huang, the second emperor of the dynasty, who had taken the throne from his dead father, hastily organized the remaining workers on the construction site to fight against the rebels. No more soil was added onto the hillock later.

Opinions also differ on how many gates the underground palace contains. Some said there were two, one made of stone and the other of bronze. Others said that there were six because Emperor Qin Shi Huang has always considered the number "six" auspicious. After reading through piles of ancient documents, archeologists say that the exact number was recorded clearly in Records of the Historian, a great historical book written by Si Ma Qian. He wrote that, "When the emperor died, he was placed in the underground palace. Then the middle gate was closed and the outer gate was shut down. All workmen were entombed. No one can escape from there."

The emperor's coffin and all his burial articles were placed inside the middle gate. When the palace was shut down, workmen were busy working in it. Within seconds, however, they were entombed along the emperor and become the burial sacrifices themselves. From the Si Ma Qian's description, the underground palace had three gates: an outer gate, a middle gate and an unmentioned inner gate. In addition, in Si Ma Qian's record, the middle gate was "closed" which meant it had two planks, and the outer gate was "shut down", which meant it slide down vertically. Besides that, the middle door was locked automatically once it was closed. It was designed deliberately to prevent any mechanism as the middle one and the three gates were located on a straight line.