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.
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meters recorded in most historical documents was just a figure copied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.