Tomb of King Wen of Nanyue

The tomb of Nanyue King of the Western Han Dynasty is located on Xianggang mountain, Jiefang North Road, Guangzhou city. It is the tomb of Zhao he, the second generation king of Nanyue kingdom in the early Western Han Dynasty. Zhao he, known as Emperor Wen, reigned from 137 to 122 BC. The tomb was discovered in June 1983. After excavation, the Nanyue King Museum of the Western Han Dynasty was built in situ. It is a national key cultural relic protection unit.

Tomb of Nanyue King in Western Han Dynasty

synonym

The tomb of Nanyue King Wen generally refers to the tomb of Nanyue King in the Western Han Dynasty

The tomb of Nanyue King of the Western Han Dynasty is located on Xianggang mountain, Jiefang North Road, Yuexiu District, Guangzhou City, Guangdong Province. It is the tomb of Zhao he, the second generation of Nanyue King in the early Western Han Dynasty.

Zhao he is the grandson of Zhao Tuo, known as Emperor Wen. He was in power from 137 to 122 BC. The tomb was discovered in June 1983. After excavation, the Museum of Nanyue King of Western Han Dynasty was built in situ. When excavated in 1983, the unearthed cultural relics included the gold seal of Emperor Wen's seal and the jade seal of Zhao, which proved the identity of the mausoleum owner. In 1996, Nanyue Wenwang tomb, Nanyue Palace site, Qin Dynasty shipbuilding site and Nanyue wooden sluice site were announced as national key cultural relics protection units by the State Council.

The excavation of King Wen's tomb in Nanyue is known as one of the five new archaeological discoveries in modern China. The tomb of Nanyue King in the Western Han Dynasty has been opened up as a museum.

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The tomb of Zhao Zhen, the second generation of Nanyue King in the Western Han Dynasty,

Location: Guangzhou, Guangdong Province, southern China. Date: about 122 BC. Date of excavation: 1983. Introduction: Nanyue King's tomb is the mausoleum of the second generation of Nanyue King Zhao in the early Western Han Dynasty. Nanyue King's tomb is a stone chamber tomb with "digging mountains for Tibet", which was constructed by the method of erecting eight holes. The plane is in the shape of "Zao", with a construction area of about 100 square meters. The tomb is divided into seven rooms according to the layout of "former dynasty and later bedroom". The front three rooms are the front room and the East and West ear room, and the rear four rooms are the main coffin room, the East and west side room and the back storage room. More than 1000 pieces of gold and silver, bronze, iron, pottery, jade, glaze, lacquer wood, bamboo and other relics were unearthed. Among them, "Wendi Xingxi" gold seal and "silk jade clothing" are the most valuable. Significance: the discovery of Nanyue King's tomb provides valuable material materials for exploring the development of Lingnan area and the history of Nanyue during the Qin and Han Dynasties.

Zhao he, known as Zhao Hu in historical records, was the second generation king of Nanyue state in the Western Han Dynasty. He was in power from 137 BC to 122 BC. He was the grandson of Zhao Tuo, the first generation king of Nanyue state, and was known as "Nanyue Wendi". His mausoleum is located on Xianggang mountain, Jiefang North Road, Guangzhou city. It is a famous "Tomb of Nanyue King".

The tombs of Nanyue kings were cut into hills, and a vertical cave with a "convex" shape was cut out from the top of Xianggang by 20 meters. Then horizontal holes were opened in the East and west of the front end to form an ear chamber, and a slope passage was opened in the south. The chamber of the tomb is made of red sandstone, imitating the shape of the front hall and the back bedroom. The top of the tomb is covered with 24 large stones and then compacted in layers. The tomb is built after the living house. The tomb faces south, with seven rooms in the front three and the back four, 12.5 meters wide and 10.85 meters long. The owner of the tomb lives in the middle room at the back, the front hall and the back storeroom. The East and west parts of the front part are the ear rooms, and the East and west parts of the back part are the side rooms. There were 15 martyrs, including 4 concubines and 7 servants. In the front, the four walls and the top of the front room are painted with two colors of cloud Satin patterns of Zhu and Mo; in the East ear room, there are utensils for drinking and banquet, such as bronze chime bells, stone chime bells, lifting cylinder, francium, Pei and six Bo chessboard; in the West ear room, there are weapons, chariots, horses, armor, bows and arrows, five colors of medicinal stones, daily necessities and treasures, especially the silver boxes from Persia, African elephant teeth, lacquer boxes, fumigation ovens and other treasures Dark blue glass. These cultural relics prove that Guangzhou had maritime trade with Persia and the east coast of Africa in the early years or even earlier. In the middle of the rear main chamber is the main chamber of the coffin storehouse of the tomb owner. The tomb owner wears silk jade clothes and carries 9 seals. The largest one is the gold seal of "Wen Di Xing Xi" dragon button. In addition, there is the "emperor seal" of "Hu Niu". The gold seal of guiniu "Taizi" and the jade seal of the tomb owner "Zhaohe" are also included. On the east side of the room is the collection room of Ji Qie, and each of the four Ji Qie who died had a wife seal. On the west side of the room is the place of kitchen service, where seven people died without coffins. There are pigs, cattle and sheep in the back of the room. The back storeroom is a food storeroom with nearly 100 large-scale copper, iron and ceramic cookers and containers. A total of more than 1000 pieces (sets) of cultural relics have been unearthed. The gold seal is the first gold seal unearthed from the emperor of Han Dynasty in China. These unearthed cultural relics are of great value to the study of land development, production, culture, trade, architecture and the history of Nanyue. In this paper, the mausoleum and some precious cultural relics are introduced in detail.

According to the catalogue of the first batch of cultural relics prohibited from going abroad (for exhibition) issued by the State Administration of cultural relics in 2002, a total of 64 first-class cultural relics (groups) are prohibited from going abroad (for exhibition). Among them are the "angle shaped jade Cup" and "five pieces of copper screen components" unearthed from the tomb of Nanyue King. It has become one of the first batch of cultural relics banned from going abroad for exhibition.

Traffic information

1. Take bus 203, 273, 552, 7, 543, 211, 29, 33 to Jiefang North Road station. 2. Take bus No.21, 519, 528, 555, 556, 108, 110 to Yuexiu Park station. 3. Metro Line 2, exit e of Yuexiu Park station.

geographical position

Excavation process

The city of Guangzhou was called Panyu in ancient times. Xianggang, the westernmost part of Yuexiu mountain outside the city, is not a big hillside. It is like a sleeping elephant. It has always been a scenic spot near the ancient city. At first, it was connected with Yuexiu mountain, with towering trees and murmuring streams. During the Hongwu Period of the Ming Dynasty, the three ancient cities of Panyu united into one, extending the north city to the north for more than 2600 meters. Xianggang was cut through, separated from Yuexiu mountain, and opened a road to become the north gate of the new city. In the Shunzhi period of the Qing Dynasty, it became an important defense area in the south. In order to resist foreign humiliation, the military connected it with the three fortresses of Baoji, Yongning and Qiding in the north. The hills and forests were cut down and the Gongji fortress was built to protect the north city of Guangzhou. After the founding of the people's Republic of China, with the advantage of strategic position, the PLA settled here, dug bunkers and used it as a military restricted zone.

In June 1983, an engineering team carried out infrastructure construction in Xianggang mountain. The hillside will be flattened by roaring excavators and replaced by a rising apartment building. Dozens of construction workers have been working hard day and night. They have excavated 17 meters from the top of the mountain, which is less than 50 meters above sea level. The project is progressing smoothly. During this period, several ancient tombs have been excavated, from the Han and Jin Dynasties to the Ming Dynasty. It can be seen that this place is indeed a geomantic treasure land. The cultural relics workers in Guangzhou attach great importance to this and send a working group to investigate every time. However, these cemeteries are small in scale, and they were visited by grave robbers in their early years, leaving only empty tombs. With the deepening of excavation, archaeologists think it is impossible to have tombs in such a deep soil layer, so the project entered the normal construction stage.

But one day at noon, after a round of rough excavation by excavators, the workers began to remove the earth and stone and level the working face. Suddenly, they found that the sand and soil layers had disappeared. Instead, they were huge and regular stone slabs with narrow gaps between them. If it's artificial construction, it's really incredible. The workers didn't think too much about it. They used a t-pick to pry along one of the stone slab gaps to both sides. As the gap widens, a deep bottomless black hole emerges. Some people say it was an air defense fortification dug by Lin Biao's troops at that time, some say it was a coincidence of geological movement, and some even think it was a trace of alien civilization. At this time, Deng Qinyou, the chief of the infrastructure department in charge of the construction site, just passed by. Seeing the crowd, he came forward to check. It doesn't matter at first sight. Based on the experience of excavating ancient tombs at the construction site several times and the archaeological knowledge he learned from the cultural relics staff, he quickly reported the matter to the general office of Guangdong provincial government and contacted Huang miaozhang, the duty officer of Guangdong Provincial Bureau of cultural relics. At that time, Deng Qinyou didn't realize how well his move protected the Tianda secret buried under the construction site.

After Huang miaozhang received the phone call, he rushed to the cultural relics bureau with his colleagues. With a flashlight, he leaned over to look inside. He saw a huge space in the cave, rough shape of the stone wall, and a huge bronze tripod in one corner. His heart suddenly tightened, and it can be preliminarily concluded that this is not an ordinary Tomb of Jin Dynasty or Ming Dynasty, but a noble tomb before Han Dynasty. You know, the whole Guangzhou area has never been found before the Han Dynasty tombs, such a huge tomb is unprecedented. Huang miaozhang urgently contacted Mai Yinghao, director of Guangzhou Cultural Relics Management Committee. This man is an experienced archaeologist who is also the director of Guangzhou Museum. When he received the phone call, an idea flashed through his brain: has the tomb of King Yue appeared?

Nanyue state was a feudal regime in the Western Han Dynasty, which separated the vast territory of Lingnan. Zhao Tuo, the founder of Nanyue state, fought for more than 70 years to create the great cause of Nanyue state. He was more than 100 years old. In the last decades of his life, he had been carefully arranging the affairs after his death. In order to prevent the tomb from being stolen after his death, he sent important officials to dig dozens of suspected tombs in the broad mountains outside the capital Panyu. The first thing Zhao Hu, the grandson of Zhao Tuo, did after he ascended the throne

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