The excavation of Mawangdui Han Tomb is of great value to China's historical and scientific research, and its unearthed cultural relics are extremely precious. According to textual research, the silk book Fifty-two Prescriptions for Diseases unearthed from Tomb No.3 may be earlier than Huangdi Neijing (written in the Spring and Autumn Period and the Warring States Period), which records 52 diseases, mentions more than 100 diseases, and has more than 280 prescriptions and more than 240 drugs used. This is the earliest prescription that can be seen in China now. The discovery of Fifty-two Prescriptions for Diseases supplements the medical contents of Guangxi Zhuang Autonomous Region before Neijing, which is a very precious medical heritage.
More than 3,000 precious cultural relics have been unearthed from the three Han tombs in Mawangdui, most of which are well preserved. Among them, more than 500 pieces of various lacquerware are beautifully made, luxuriantly decorated and as bright as new. What is precious is a large number of silk fabrics in Tomb No.1, which are well protected. There are many varieties, such as silk, silk, silk, yarn, brocade and so on. There is a plain gauze Zen dress, as light as smoke and as thin as cicada wings. Length 1.28 meters, long sleeves, weighing only 49 grams. Its knitting skill is superb, which is really ingenious. The unearthed silk paintings are the earliest existing large-scale works in China that describe the real life at that time. There are also colorful figurines, musical instruments, weapons, seals, silk books and other treasures.
The painted lacquer coffin in the No.1 Han Tomb is as bright as new, and the top paint is painted with flowing water and animal monsters, with complex shape, vivid posture and high artistic level. A large number of silk books with 654.38+ 10,000 words unearthed from Tomb No.3 are rare historical documents. Silk books involve ancient philosophy, history and science and technology. After sorting, * * * has 28 kinds of books,120,000 words. There are also several books, most of which are lost. The topographic map unearthed from the No.2 Han Tomb is similar to the modern map in drawing technology and marking position. It has been exhibited in the United States, Japan, Poland and other countries and is highly praised as an "amazing discovery".
Mawangdui Han Tomb Site is located in the eastern suburb of Changsha, four kilometers away from the city center. It was named Mawangdui because it is said to be the graveyard of Ma Yin, the king of Chu. Among the three Han tombs, the second tomb belongs to Hou Licang, the prime minister of Changsha in the early Han Dynasty, the first tomb is the wife of Li Cang, and the third tomb is the son of Li Cang. Among the three tombs, Tomb No.1 is the largest, with a length of19.5m from north to south, a width of17.8m from east to west and a depth of16m. Now the No.1 and No.2 tombs have been filled in, the No.3 tomb has been reinforced and preserved, and a large-span ceiling has been built for people to visit.
Tomb of Changsha Prime Minister, Hou Licang and their families in the early Western Han Dynasty. Located in the eastern suburb of Changsha City, Hunan Province. Changsha is the seat of Linxiang County, the capital of Changsha in Han Dynasty. This cemetery was misinformed as the cemetery of Ma Yin, the king of Chu during the Five Dynasties and Ten Kingdoms period, so it was called Mawangdui. She was buried as the mother of Changsha and the "twin daughter" of Tang. Tomb 1 was excavated by Hunan Provincial Museum and Institute of Archaeology of China Academy of Sciences in 1972. At the beginning of 1973 to 1974, tombs No.2 and No.3 were excavated. Mawangdui No.1 Han Tomb in Changsha was published on 1973. According to historical records and Hanshu, Li Xiangcang died in Changsha in the second year of Emperor Huidi (BC 193). The three seals of "Prime Minister of Changsha", "Hou" and "Li Cang" were found in Tomb No.2, indicating that the owner of the tomb was the first generation of Hou Licang himself. 1 A 50-year-old female corpse was found in the tomb, which was given the title of "Princess Xin Zhui". The owner of the tomb should be Li Cang's wife. The body of the owner of Tomb No.3 belongs to a man in his thirties, which may be the tomb of Li Cang's son. A wooden slip unearthed from Tomb No.3 has the words "December 12th, New Year's Eve", indicating that the tomb was in the 12th year of Emperor Wen (BC 168). 1 Tomb No.2 and No.3 were broken respectively, so the age should be later. The excavation of Mawangdui Han Tomb provides extremely important material data for studying the development of handicraft industry and science and technology in the early Western Han Dynasty, as well as the historical culture and social life at that time.
Grave shape
On the ground of Mawangdui Han Tomb, there are two pieces of soil with similar original size, which are juxtaposed from east to west. Each piece of soil has a bottom diameter of about 40 meters, a flat top and a height of about 16 meters. The local area used to be a mound four or five meters high. When building a tomb, first dig out the lower part of the tomb pit on the mound, and then tamp the upper part of the tomb pit and the pyramid-shaped mound with the method of slab construction. After burial, the soil is filled and compacted to build a tall mound. The pit types of the three tombs are basically the same, all of which are rectangular vertical holes, and the tombs are on the north side. 1 Tomb pit is the largest and deepest. The north-south length of the tomb entrance is19.5m, and the east-west width is17.8m.. There are four steps below, and there is a bucket-shaped pit wall all the way to the bottom of the tomb. The bottom of the tomb is 7.6m long, 6.7m wide and 16m deep. The other two tombs are slightly smaller and shallow, with only three steps on the tomb wall. The bottom of Tomb No.2 is 7.25m long and 5.95m wide. The bottom of Tomb No.3 is 5.8 meters long and 5.05 meters wide.
At the bottom of the tomb and around the tombs of the three tombs, charcoal and white paste were filled, and then filled layer by layer, compacted and sealed. Tomb 1 is filled with charcoal with a thickness of 0.4 ~ 0.5m and a total weight of about1000kg. The white gypsum mud distributed outside the carbon layer, with the thickness of 1 ~ 1.3m, has strong viscosity and extremely low permeability, which plays a decisive role in plugging. The white ash of Tomb 1 is thick, uniform and tightly sealed, which makes the tomb buried in the ground 10 meters form a high-standard constant temperature, constant humidity, hypoxia and aseptic environment, and basically eliminates the damage of physical, chemical and biological factors to various substances, so the multi-layer coffins, the bodies of the tomb owners and the funerary objects in the tomb are well preserved. The other two tombs, especially Tomb No.2, are poorly preserved due to the thin accumulation and uneven distribution of white plaster and mud.
Coffin structure
The coffins of Tomb 1 and Tomb 3 are intact, with the same structure, but with certain differences in scale. 1 The huge coffin chamber and four-story coffin of the tomb are made by fastening, tenon joint and pin joint, and the wood is about 52 cubic meters. The tomb is made of heavy pine boards, 6.73 meters long, 4.9 meters wide and 2.8 meters high. Under it, there are two floors, and then four walls and four partitions are built to form a central coffin chamber and surrounding side boxes, and the upper part is covered with a top plate and two cover plates. The four-story coffin is made of catalpa wood, and the inner wall is painted with red paint, but the appearance is different. The outer black lacquer coffin is the largest, with a length of 2.95m, a width of1.5m and a height of1.44m, without other decorations. On the second floor, there are painted coffins on the black soil, which are decorated with complex and changeable moire patterns and monsters and animals of different shapes. On the third floor, Judy painted coffins decorated with auspicious patterns such as dragons, tigers, suzaku and immortals. The fourth floor is an inner coffin decorated with brocade, which is used to bury the body directly. After the coffin is covered, two bundles of silk are added horizontally, and then the feather applique brocade with velvet embroidery as the edge decoration is covered. There is a longitudinal beam in the south compartment of Tomb 3. The coffin has three layers, and the outer coffin and the middle coffin are painted with brown melanin paint without any other decoration. After adding tow, the inner coffin was covered with embroidery decorated with velvet rings. Judging from the remaining traces, the structure of Tomb 2 is different from that of Tomb 1 and Tomb 3, and there are two layers of coffins in the coffin.