Chinese workers digging a well in 1974 made a startling discovery: thousands of life-size terracotta figures of an army prepared for battle. Now called the Terracotta Army or Terracotta Warriors, the figures are located in three pits near the city of X'ian in China's Shaanxi province.
Thousands of terracotta warriors watch over Qin Shi Huang's mausoleum.
CREDIT: Dreamstime
CREDIT: Dreamstime
The details of the warriors are so intricate and individualized that it has been hypothesized that they were based on real soldiers who served in the emperor’s army. Another key feature is that the warriors were decorated in bright colors. New conservation techniques, performed on recently excavated figures, allow some of these patterns to be discerned. [Gallery: Ancient Chinese Warriors Protect Secret Tomb]
Curiously, when the emperor created this army he had it face east, not toward the frontiers of his empire but rather toward the territories he had already taken. Why he did this is a mystery, it could be because of the topography around his mausoleum or it could because he felt the real threat came from the lands he had conquered.
The first emperor
His birth name was Ying Zheng and he was born at a time when China was divided into a number of warring states. One of these states, named Qin, was located in the western portion of ancient China and had been expanding for some time.
An army of clay warriors guards the tomb of China's first emperor, Qin Shi Huang, who died in 210 BC. The tomb is still under excavation near Xi'an, China.
CREDIT: Clara Moskowitz/LiveScience
CREDIT: Clara Moskowitz/LiveScience
In this ensuing period, the emperor’s terracotta army may not have been looked upon kindly. Archaeologist Yuan Zhongyi writes in his book "China’s Terracotta Army and the First Emperor’s Mausoleum" (Homa and Sekey, 2011) that pit two was “partially burnt down,” possibly by a rebel army that arose shortly after the first emperor’s death.
Another researcher, Chen Shen, curator of a massive Terracotta Warriors show that appeared recently in New York, notes that historical records are silent about the warriors. Sima Qian, a Han Dynasty historian who lived about a century after the first emperor’s time, doesn’t talk about the warriors despite covering 3,000 years of Chinese history in his “Shiji” (Records of the Grand Historian). That could be because he didn’t want to highlight the first emperor’s achievement.
“Because the historian served an emperor whose ancestors overthrew the First Emperor’s brief dynasty, he had to be conscious of presenting the past in a way that would not distress his ruler with unflattering comparisons,” Shen writes in his exhibition book "The Warrior Emperor and China’s Terracotta Army" (Royal Ontario Museum Press, 2010).
Indeed while terracotta figures were made by later Chinese rulers, none of them attempted to produce a large army of life-sized figures ever again.
Pit one – Infantry and chariots
Pit one, the largest pit, is rectangular and covers 14,000 square meters (150,000 square feet) of space, the size of almost three football fields.
“The floor of the passage ways and the surrounding corridors is paved with grey bricks. The roof is supported by thick and sturdy wood blocks, one closely next to another, on which is covered with mats, and upon that loess [a sediment],” writes Zhongyi in his book.
The portions excavated so far are filled with warriors. A map that University of London researcher Lucas Nickel published in his book "First Emperor: China’s Terracotta Army" (British Museum Press, 2007) illustrates their formation.
At the front of pit one is a vanguard of un-armored standing archers, three rows deep, which Zhongyi writes were mainly equipped with bow and arrows. Behind them, separated by earthen mounds, are 11 straight lines of figures, many of them armored warriors who would have been equipped with melee weapons such as the halberd. Interspersed with these armored warriors are war chariots that were made of wood (now decayed) with four terracotta horses each. Each of these chariots has a driver (wearing extra-long armor for protection) along with two warriors armed with either melee weapons or bows.
Zhongyi writes that this arrangement of a fast-moving vanguard, equipped with long-range weapons, which in turn is followed by a heavier force, is not an accident. He points out that the ancient Chinese military strategist Sun Tzu wrote in his book the "Art of War" that the “the tip (vanguard) must be hard-hitting while the body must be overwhelming,” a lesson the first emperor appears to have applied in the afterlife.
Pit two – Introducing the cavalry
Pit two is located just to the north of pit one and is about half its size and roughly square (with a bulging area in the northeast where the force’s vanguard is located).
Emperor Qin Shi Huang was buried with everything he needed for the afterlife, including an army complete with life-size clay horses.
CREDIT: Clara Moskowitz/LiveScience
CREDIT: Clara Moskowitz/LiveScience
The main force of pit two, the part meant to overwhelm the enemy, includes about 80 war chariots. Each has two riders and a charioteer and there are also some armored troops, equipped with melee weapons, intermixed.
Newly introduced in pit two is a squadron of cavalry. Located in the northwest of the pit, the saddled horses are male, life-size and each carries a rider. Zhongyi notes the armor of the riders stops short of the waist, that way “the lap won’t touch the horse when the rider is seated.” The riders would have been equipped with both bows and melee weapons.
At the front of the horse squadron are six “assistant chariots,” as Zhongyi calls them. They have a charioteer with only one warrior, the empty space reserved for an officer.
Thousands of terracotta warriors guard the tomb of the first emperor of China.
CREDIT: meanmachine77 / Shutterstock.com
CREDIT: meanmachine77 / Shutterstock.com
By far the smallest of the pits is pit three, used as a command post. It has an honor guard consisting of armored warriors holding long poles. At center is a grand command chariot manned by four warriors (including a charioteer). The “beautifully painted vehicle body was crowned by a round ornamented canopy indicating that this chariot had a special function,” Lucas Nickel writes. “It may have been designed to carry the commander of the army.”
The army commander is not included among the terracotta figures and researchers do not know his identity. One possibility is that the commander is no less than the emperor himself, who still lies buried in his tomb.
Non-military terracotta figures
Non-military terracotta figures have been discovered in other pits. Like the army, they were meant for the afterlife and include terracotta civil servants, equipped with knives and bamboo tablets for writing, and even a group of terracotta acrobats meant for entertainment.
“According to the way they [the acrobats] perform we speculate they are not indigenous to central China, but probably come from the south – probably the Burma area,” said archaeologist Duan Qingbo, who was in charge of excavations at the Terracotta Army pits, in translated comments that appeared in "The Independent" (UK).
For the first emperor’s afterlife, nothing was spared. He had a large army in proper military formation and even entertainment brought in from afar.
Owen Jarus, LiveScience Contributor