Tomb
The tomb of Wen was discovered in 1983, 20 meters under Elephant Hill in Guangzhou on a construction site for a hotel, and has been excavated. The tomb measures 11 meters long and 12 meters wide. It is divided in seven parts, with a front chamber, east and west wing rooms, the main coffin chamber, east and west side rooms, and a back storage chamber. The tomb has yielded more than 1000 burial artifacts, and a chariot, gold and silver vessels, musical instruments, and human sacrifices were found (15 courtiers were buried alive with him to serve him in death). It is also the only tomb of the early Western Han Dynasty that has murals on its walls.
The tomb also yielded the oldest imperial seal discovered in a Chinese tomb: the seal, with the name "Zhao Mo", declared the royal corpse to be “Emperor Wen", indicating that he considered himself equal in rank to the Han ruler.
Alongside Chinese artifacts, pieces from the steppes, and Iranian and Hellenistic Central Asian regions have been found: a Persian silver box found in the tomb is the earliest imported product found to date in China.
The Museum of the Mausoleum of the Nanyue King, located in Jiefang road in Guangzhou, stands on the site of the tomb of Zhao Mo.
Read more about this topic: Zhao Mo
Famous quotes containing the word tomb:
“Some sepulcher, remote, alone,
Against whose portal she hath thrown,
In childhood, many an idle stone—
Some tomb from out whose sounding door
She ne’er shall force an echo more,
Thrilling to think, poor child of sin!
It was the dead who groaned within.”
—Edgar Allan Poe (1809–1849)
“Be mine the tomb that swallowed up Pharaoh and all his hosts; let me lie down with Drake, where he sleeps in the sea.”
—Herman Melville (1819–1891)
“Was it the proud full sail of his great verse,
Bound for the prize of all too precious you,
That did my ripe thoughts in my brain inherse,
Making their tomb the womb wherein they grew?
Was it his spirit, by spirits taught to write
Above a mortal pitch, that struck me dead?”
—William Shakespeare (1564–1616)