Tomb of Qin Shi Huang - fantasy and archaeological reality. Qin Shi Huang - legacy and heirs Achievements of Qin Shi Huang

early years

To accompany the emperor in the other world, countless terracotta troops were sculpted. The faces of the warriors are individualized, their bodies were previously brightly colored. Unlike his predecessors - for example, the rulers of the Shang state (c. 1300-1027 BC) - the emperor refused mass human sacrifices.

Reputation

Monument to Qin Shihuang at the mound with his tomb.

The reign of Qin Shihuang was based on the principles of legalism set forth in the treatise Han Feizi. All surviving written evidence about Qin Shihuang is passed through the prism of the Confucian worldview of Han historiographers, primarily Sima Qian. It is very likely that the information they provided about the burning of all books, the ban on Confucianism and the burial of Confucius’ followers alive reflected Confucian anti-Qin propaganda directed against the legalists.

In traditional depictions, Qin Shihuang's appearance as a monstrous tyrant is tendentiously exaggerated. It can be considered established that all subsequent states of China, starting with the Western Han, inherited the administrative-bureaucratic system of government that was created under the first emperor.

Qin Shihuang in art

• Based on the history of the unification of China, Chen Kaige in 1999 made the film “The Emperor and the Assassin”, which quite closely follows the outline of “Shi Ji”. In 2002, Zhang Yimou made the most expensive film in the history of Chinese cinema on this topic - “Hero”.
• In 2006, the premiere of the opera “The First Emperor” took place on the stage of the Metropolitan Opera (New York) (composer - Tan Dun, director - Zhang Yimou). The role of the emperor was sung by Placido Domingo.
• In 2008, Qin Shihuang returned to life on the silver screen in the Hollywood blockbuster The Mummy: Tomb of the Dragon Emperor.

Literature

• Sima Qian. Historical notes. Translation by R. V. Vyatkin. Volume 2 (chapter 6 "Basic records [of the actions of] Qin Shi-huang"), as well as volume 7 (chapter 85 "Biography of Lü Buwei") and volume 8 (chapter 86 "Biographies of the Avengers: biography of Jing Ke ")
• Perelomov, L. S. (Leonard Sergeevich). The Qin Empire is the first centralized state in China (221-202 BC) // Academy of Sciences of the USSR. Institute of Asian Peoples. - M.: Eastern Publishing House. lit., 1962.
• Ulyanov, M.Yu. Qin Shihuang and his army - Eastern collection, 2007, p. 20-38.

By about 480 BC. e. On the territory of Ancient China there were seven kingdoms that were constantly at war with each other. By 221 BC. e. The Qin kingdom conquered all other kingdoms. A colossal empire came under the rule of King Qin. He called himself Qin Shi Huang, which means “first emperor of China.”

To prevent the powerful nobles from rebelling against their emperor, Shi Huangdi ordered them to move to the capital Xianyang. Here he could keep them under constant control. The weapons that belonged to the nobles' own troops were taken and melted down.

Qin Shi Huang ordered the construction of new roads and canals in ancient China to establish connections between different parts of the empire. He also forced everyone to use coins of the same mintage, to use a single system of measures and weights. These measures made it possible to revive trade between the subjects of the huge empire.

Qin Shi Huang, in order to be sure that his orders were clear to everyone, introduced a single type of writing throughout the empire.

Burning of books and burial of scribes

Qin Shi Huang was convinced that people were vicious and that they should be forced to obey the law. Any disobedient person is subject to severe punishment. He ordered to burn all books that contradicted his views. Scientists who dared to rebel were thrown into a pit and buried alive. Material from the site

When in 210 BC. e. Qin Shi Huang died and was buried in a huge tomb guarded by an army consisting of more than 7,500 life-size sculptures of warriors. The warriors were made of terracotta (a type of ceramic) and their weapons were real. All the warriors had different faces. Terracotta warriors placed around the tomb reliably guarded their emperor. They say that the mounted crossbows were shot at anyone who tried to enter the tomb.

“All chariots have an axle of the same length,
all hieroglyphs are standard spelling"

Slogan attributed to Qin Shi Huangdi's reforms

The first Chinese emperor of the Qin dynasty, reigning from 221 until his death in 210 BC.

"Qin Shi Huang" means the founding emperor of the Qin dynasty.

Qin Shi Huangdi conquered 6 Chinese kingdoms; introduced into them a unified system of hieroglyphs, weights and measures, and a monetary unit; built a network of roads with 3 lanes (the central lane is for the Emperor's chariot); repaired individual parts of the Great Wall of China, connecting them together and began building his tomb in advance.

By his order and for his tomb, more than 7000 life-size figures of warriors. Characteristically, the soldiers had no two identical faces.

Qin Shi Huangdi was an opponent of moral ideas Confucius and by his decree from 213 BC, ancient chronicles and books containing Confucian ideas were burned, and also executed only in the capital 460 Confucians, while others were sent to build roads. But the Chinese were allowed to have military, medical, fortune-telling and agricultural treatises.

The main ideology in Qin was the doctrine legalism, set out in the treatise “Han Fei-tzu”.

The legalists believed that the prosperity of the state did not depend on the virtues of the Emperor, but on the strict and unwavering implementation of the laws. At the same time, any deviation from the law - including for reasons of kindness and/or humanity - was considered an unacceptable weakness...

“... Qin Shi Huang was a correct humanist. If the enemy did not surrender, he destroyed him; if he gave up, he also destroyed him. True, Qin Shi Huang did not like the word “humanism” - in Chinese it sounds “ren”, and books that talked about “ren” ordered to be burned, and at the same time all other books, except for works on agriculture, military and fortune telling books.
And the bookish intellectuals who talked about “ren” were rounded up and drowned in outhouses or subjected to other shameful executions. There were four hundred of these intellectuals in total; The layer had not yet had time to grow, and Qin Shi Huang’s task turned out to be relatively simple.
Having cleansed the country of incorrect humanism, Qin Shi Huang unified China and founded a unified Chinese state on firm principles: for failure to inform - execution, for denunciation - promotion or other reward.
Great structures were built, including the Great Wall, which still stands today (it was completed and rebuilt, but the foundation was laid by Qin Shi Huang).
This magnificent state had only one drawback: it was impossible to live in it. Even Qin Shi Huang, the creator of the system, could not stand it. He fell ill with the professional disease of progressive figures of this type - persecution mania.
The people couldn't stand it either. As soon as Qin Shi Huang died, the Chinese emerged from the state of tetanus into which Qin progress had plunged them, and Er Shi Huang (son of Qin Shi Huang) was dethroned. After several years of unrest, the Han Dynasty reigned, rehabilitating the intelligentsia and the intelligentsia.
Since then, the Chinese have called themselves Han, and Chinese emperors for 2,100 years were embarrassed to wear a military uniform.
Only recently has the fashion for paramilitary jackets returned again.
Qin Shi Huang He was not at all an illiterate tyrant.
He acted on the basis of a strictly developed scientific theory. The origins of this theory apparently go back to Moe Dee, who put forward the principle of “everything for the people” (on this basis, the milliners rejected art and science as incomprehensible to the people).
Shang Yang gave the theory a more rigorous character, replacing the vague term “people” with a more precise one - the state. In the name of the state, it was supposed to destroy all other archaic institutions, for example, the family, so that family ties would not interfere with loyalty to the sovereign.
Han Fei wrote a brilliant treatise in which a person in the hands of the government was equated to a piece of wood in the hands of an artisan.
This treatise has been preserved and translated into English and French in the UNESCO “Oriental Classics” series; excerpts can be read in any anthology.
Han Fei I didn’t compare a person with a machine just because there were no machines then. Essentially, it can be considered the forerunner of cybernetics.”

Pomerantz G.S. , The moral character of a historical figure, in Sat.: Vegetarian era / Ed. E. Yamburga, M., “Peak”, 2003, p. 421-422

“Many ancient kings - like Emperor Qin, who unified China around 200 BC - sent huge fleets in search of the Fountain of Youth, but were not successful. (According to legend, the emperor Qin did not order his flotilla to return without the secret of immortality. The sailors were unable to find the Fountain of Youth, but were afraid to return with news of failure and instead founded Japan).

Michio Kaku, Physics of the Future, M., Alpina Nonfiction, 2012, p. 222.

“He built the Great Wall of China because walls provide protection; he burned the books because the opposition appealed to them, extolling previous emperors. […] Fencing a field, fencing a garden is a common thing; and it is a completely different matter to protect the empire. Forcing the most traditional of peoples to renounce the memory of the past - no matter whether mythical or real - is not a trivial task. When Shi Huangdi ordered that history begin with him, China already had a three-thousand-year history and knew both the Yellow Emperor and Chuang Tzu, And Confucius, And Lao Tzu. Shi Huangdi sent his mother into exile for debauchery; the orthodox considered such a severe punishment merciless. But what if Shi Huangdi decided to get rid of the past all at once just to erase the memory of his mother’s dishonor? (The ruler of Judea did exactly the same thing, ordering the extermination of all male babies - in order to kill just one.) This assumption is acceptable, but it does not explain to us the other component of the myth - the Chinese Wall. Historians claim that Shi Huangdi forbade mention of death; in search of the elixir of immortality, he retired to his allegorical palace, where there were as many rooms as there were days in the year. This suggests that building a wall in space and destroying books in time are two magical barriers designed to stop death."

Jorge Luis Borges, The Wall and Books / From Nobody to Nobody: Stories, Essays. M., "Olma-Press", 2000, p. 222-223.

The craftsmen who built the Emperor's tomb were walled up in it.

Modern Chinese writing goes back to the hieroglyphs of the reign of Qin Shi Huangdi.

The first emperor of China, Qin Shihound, is an iconic figure for the Chinese. He is considered the founder of the current state.

China until 221, when the emperor declared himself the ruler of all of China, consisted of several kingdoms,

Ying Zheng (this was the emperor's real name) became the ruler of the Qin kingdom in 246 BC at the age of 13. Having reached adulthood in 238, Ying Zheng completely took power into his own hands.

The reign of Ying Zheng is associated with the largest construction projects in the history of China and the ancient world. One of them is a large irrigation canal, which in 246 began to be built by the engineer Zheng Guo from the Han kingdom. The length of the canal was 150 km. and it took ten years to build. As a result of construction, the amount of area suitable for agriculture increased by 264.4 thousand hectares, which led to an unprecedented economic rise in Qin.

Ying Zheng waged successful wars. Gradually, he captured, one after another, all six states into which China was divided at that time: in 230 BC. e. Han, in 225 - Wei, in 223 - Chu, in 222 - Zhao and Yan, and in 221 - Qi.

Thus, he united all of China and in 221 BC took the throne name Qin Shihuang, founding a new imperial Qin dynasty and naming himself its first ruler.

The capital of the empire was Xianyang, not far from modern Xi'an.

In addition to reforms in writing, the monetary system, the creation of roads and other things, the emperor began grandiose construction projects, the burden of which fell on the shoulders of millions of ordinary people.

Immediately after declaring himself emperor, Qin Shi Huang began building his tomb.

Construction of the tomb began in 247 BC. e. More than 700 thousand workers and artisans were involved in its construction. Qin Shi Huang was buried in 210 BC. e. A huge amount of jewelry and handicrafts were buried with him. Also, 48 of his concubines were buried alive with the emperor.

A whole army of clay sculptures, the so-called, was hidden underground.

The warriors and horses of the Terracotta Army were made in various areas of China.

The warrior figures are real works of art; they were made individually. Each statue has its own unique features and even facial expressions.

Another no less significant construction project of Qin Shi Huang was During its construction, the previously existing northern walls were used, which were strengthened and connected to each other.

Construction lasted 10 years, the number of workers reached 300 thousand. The landscape along which the construction of the wall took place was complex (mountain ranges, gorges), so construction was fraught with significant difficulties.

To build the Great Wall of China, stone slabs were used, which were laid close to each other over layers of compacted earth. During the construction of the Wall, a large embankment was built in the east. Later, sections of the Wall began to be faced, for which stone and brick were used.

The emperor died in 210 during another tour of his possessions.

However, the Qin Dynasty ended there. After the death of the emperor, an uprising broke out and his entire family was exterminated.

based on wikipedia materials

Ying Zheng was born in 259 BC, in Handan (in the Principality of Zhao), where his father Zhuang Xiangwang was a hostage. At birth he was given the name Zheng ("first"). His mother was a concubine who had previously been in a relationship with the influential courtier Lü Buwei. It was thanks to the latter's intrigues that Zheng inherited the throne, which gave rise to rumors that Lü Buwei was Zheng's true father.

When Zheng became the Qin ruler at the age of 13, his state was already the most powerful in the Celestial Empire. Everything was moving towards the unification of China led by the Qin dynasty. The states of Central China looked at Shaanxi (the mountainous northern country that served as the core of the Qin possessions) as a barbarian outskirts. The state structure of the Qin kingdom was distinguished by a powerful military machine and a large bureaucracy.

Until 238, Zheng was considered a minor, and Lü Buwei was in charge of all affairs as regent and first minister. During these years, the future emperor absorbed the totalitarian ideology of legalism, popular at court, the most prominent representative of which at that time was Han Fei. When Zheng was 22 years old, he ordered the execution of his stepmother's lover (due to the same title, confused with his mother), and Lü Buwei was sent into exile on suspicion of preparing a rebellion.

In subsequent years, Zheng captured one after another all six states into which China was divided at that time. At the same time, he did not disdain any methods - neither the creation of a network of spies, nor bribes, nor the help of wise advisers, among whom Li Si took first place. At the age of 32, he took possession of the principality in which he was born, and then his mother died. The following year, a murderer sent by Prince Yan Dan was caught. At the age of 39, Zheng united all of China for the first time in history and took the throne name Qin Shihuang.

Title of the first emperor

The proper name Ying Zheng was given to the future emperor after the name of the month of birth (正), the first in the calendar, the child received the name Zheng (政). In the complex system of names and titles of antiquity, the first and last names were not written side by side, as is the case in modern China, so the name Qin Shihuang itself is extremely limited in use.

The unprecedented power of the ruler of the imperial era required the introduction of a new title. Qin Shihuangdi literally means "founding emperor of the Qin dynasty." The old title wang, translated as “monarch, prince, king,” was no longer acceptable: with the weakening of Zhou, the title of wang was devalued. Initially, the terms Huang (“ruler, august”) and Di (“emperor”) were used separately (see Three Sovereigns and Five Emperors). Their unification was intended to emphasize the autocracy of a new type of ruler.

The imperial title thus created lasted until the Xinhai Revolution of 1912, until the very end of the imperial era. It was used both by those dynasties whose power extended over the entire Celestial Empire, and by those who only sought to reunite its parts under their leadership.

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Rule of a unified China

The colossal campaign to unify the Celestial Empire was completed in 221, after which the new emperor carried out a number of reforms to consolidate the won unity: under the slogan “all chariots with an axle of the same length, all hieroglyphs - standard writing”, a single network of roads was created, disparate systems of hieroglyphs were abolished conquered kingdoms, a unified monetary system was introduced, as well as a system of weights and measures.

Xianyang was chosen as the capital of the empire in the ancestral Qin possessions, not far from modern Xi'an. Dignitaries and nobles of all conquered states were transferred there. In order to suppress centrifugal tendencies on the ground, the empire was divided into 36 military districts. As a sign of unity, the defensive walls that separated the former kingdoms were demolished. Only the northern part of these walls was preserved, its individual sections were fortified and connected to each other: thus, the newly formed Great Wall of China separated the Middle State from the barbarian nomads.

During the last ten years of his life, the emperor rarely visited his capital. He constantly inspected various parts of his kingdom, making sacrifices in local temples, reporting to local deities about his achievements and erecting steles with self-praise. By making detours around his possessions, the emperor began the tradition of royal ascents to Mount Taishan. He was the first of the Chinese rulers to go to the seashore.

As can be understood from the “Shi Ji” of the Han historian Sima Qian, the emperor was most worried about thoughts of impending death. During his travels, he met magicians and sorcerers, hoping to learn from them the secret of the elixir of immortality. In 219, he sent an expedition to the islands of the Eastern Sea (possibly to Japan) to search for him. Confucian scholars saw this as empty superstition, for which they paid dearly: as legend says, the emperor ordered 460 of them to be buried alive in the ground. In 213, Li Si convinced the emperor to burn all books except those on agriculture, medicine and fortune telling. In addition, books from the imperial collection and chronicles of the Qin rulers were spared.

In the last years of his life, disillusioned with the prospect of gaining immortality, Qin Shihuang traveled less and less around the borders of his power, isolating himself from the world in his huge palace complex. Avoiding communication with mortals, the emperor expected that they would see him as a deity. Instead, the totalitarian rule of the first emperor gave rise to a growing number of dissatisfied people every year. Having uncovered three conspiracies, the emperor had no reason to trust any of his entourage. He died in 210 or 209 during another tour of his possessions. Adherents of the previous dynasties immediately rushed into the fight for the division of the imperial inheritance, and in 206 his entire family was exterminated.

Tomb

Nothing illustrates the power of Qin Shi Huang better than the size of the burial complex, which was built during the emperor’s lifetime. Construction of the tomb began immediately after the formation of the empire near present-day Xi'an. According to Sima Qian, 700 thousand workers and artisans were involved in the creation of the mausoleum. The perimeter of the outer wall of the burial was 6 km.

The burial mound of the first emperor was identified by archaeologists only in 1974. Its research continues to this day, and the burial place of the emperor is still awaiting an autopsy. The mound was crowned by a certain pyramidal room, through which, according to one version, the soul of the deceased was supposed to ascend to heaven.

To accompany the emperor in the other world, countless terracotta troops were sculpted. The faces of the warriors are individualized, their bodies were previously brightly colored. Unlike his predecessors - for example, the rulers of the Shang state (c. 1300-1027 BC) - the emperor refused mass human sacrifices.

The Qin Shihuang Tomb complex was the first Chinese site to be included by UNESCO in the Register of World Cultural Heritage Sites.

Reputation

The reign of Qin Shihuang was based on the principles of legalism set forth in the treatise Han Feizi. All surviving written evidence about Qin Shihuang is passed through the prism of the Confucian worldview of Han historiographers, primarily Sima Qian. It is very likely that the information they provided about the burning of all books, the ban on Confucianism, and the burial of Confucius’ followers alive reflected Confucian anti-Qin propaganda directed against the legalists.

In traditional depictions, Qin Shihuang's appearance as a monstrous tyrant is tendentiously exaggerated. It can be considered established that all subsequent states of China, starting with the Western Han, inherited the administrative-bureaucratic system of government that was created under the first emperor.

Qin Shihuang in art

Based on the history of the unification of China, Chen Kaige in 1999 made the film “The Emperor and the Assassin”, which quite closely follows the outline of “Shi Ji”. In 2002, Zhang Yimou made the most expensive film in the history of Chinese cinema on this topic - “Hero”.

In 2006, the premiere of the opera “The First Emperor” (composer Tan Dun, director Zhang Yimou) took place on the stage of the Metropolitan Opera (New York). The role of the emperor was sung by Placido Domingo.

In 2008, Jet Li played the role of Qin Shihuang in the Hollywood blockbuster The Mummy: Tomb of the Dragon Emperor.