Chinanews client, Beijing, February 5th (Reporter Song Yusheng) "The wind is depressed, but the water is cold, and the strong will never return!"
In the 20th year of King Qin's political affairs (227 BC), King Qin was assassinated when he saw the envoy of Yan State Jing Ke in Xianyang Palace.
This is the famous "Jing Ke Ci Qin" in history.
Recently, a piece of news appeared on the Internet that "the ruins of the Great Hall of Jing Ke Assassinated Qin was found", bringing the historical event more than two thousand years ago back into the public eye.
But is this true?
Xu Weihong, a researcher from the Shaanxi Provincial Institute of Archaeology who presided over the excavation, recently accepted an interview with a reporter from Chinanews.com and told about this history in the eyes of archaeologists.
Stills from the movie "Jing Ke Assassinate King Qin".
Palace No. 6 Ruins
"In the absence of textual evidence, we generally do not check in and say that this is the hall of Jingke assassinating Qin or the main hall of Xianyang Palace."
In Xu Weihong's view, many people have misunderstood the results of this excavation.
First of all, the site that has recently been interpreted as "Jingke stab Qin land" is called "Qin Xianyang City No. 6 Palace Site" in archaeological circles.
The reason why it is called this is because archaeologists classified it as No. 6 during the archaeological investigation of the Xianyang city site in the last century.
In fact, archaeologists have been excavating the ruins of Palace No. 6 for many years, and the era of the ruins itself is clearly recognizable.
The "Remains of Qin Xianyang City—Based on the Work Achievements of Urban Handicrafts Archeology" by Xu Weihong and others shows that there is still more than 6 meters of rammed-earth foundations in the building of No. 6 above the current surface, which is as high as the top of existing foundation Up to 11.3 meters.
Stills from the TV series "Da Qin Fu".
The ruins of this scale are just rammed earth foundations.
In the Qin Dynasty, there was at least 3 meters from the base to the top of the building.
Archaeologists also found curved walls and pilasters, steps and ramps, and painted vermilion floors on the top of the platform foundation. The restoration area is about 1,000 square meters.
"The No. 6 palace site is almost in the center of Xianyang Plain, facing a road more than 50 meters wide to the south. Therefore, we speculate from various signs that this is the core of Qin Palace in Xianyang North Plain. From the perspective of size and area, It has the function of a government affairs hall." Xu Weihong said.
What needs to be explained is that the site here only "has the function of a government affairs hall". There is no direct evidence to show that this is the "government affairs hall" of the Qin Dynasty, let alone the "site where Jingke assassinated Qin".
"Jing Ke stabs Qin" in the TV series "Fu of Da Qin".
"Daxing Civil Engineering"
So, did the archaeologists get any new results from this site?
"I often say that archaeology will encounter many unexpected things. We initially had high hopes for the rammed-earth high-rise buildings, but after excavation, they found that they were very damaged. On the contrary, the layout of the annex buildings found in the northwest corner of the building was even more severe. complete."
According to Xu Weihong, the annex building is relatively intact and is enclosed in a "siheyuan" style.
What's interesting is that the outer building of the annex building is a room covered with tiles and floor tiles, but no tiles are found in the house inside. "It should be a thatched roof."
"Relatively speaking, the outer houses here are exquisite, but the functional houses inside are simple."
It may be difficult for most people to imagine that the Daqin capital, which dominates the world, is so "shabby" that there are still thatched houses, and it is near the grand palace.
This has to make people wonder whether the records of Qin Shihuang's great rejoicing in the history books are exaggerated.
In fact, the important result of this excavation, the confirmation of Lanchi in the literature, also shows that Qin Shihuang's "Daxing Civil Engineering" in the literature does not seem to be what later generations imagined.
Qin Shihuang in "The Da Qin Fu".
Picture courtesy
The "Three Qin Tale" contains that the Shi Huang drew the water from the Wei River as a pond, 200 li from east to west and 20 li from north to south.
This expression has led many people to speculate that Lanchi may be an artificial lake dug by Emperor Qin Shihuang, and its scale is huge, two hundred miles long from east to west.
However, the excavation allowed archaeologists to confirm that this previous guess was not accurate.
Xu Weihong said, “We discovered that more than 2000 years ago, in the area where Lanchi was located, there was a wetland with an east-west direction and an intermittent distribution of nearly 10 kilometers. The construction of Qin Xianyang City should take advantage of such natural geographical conditions. There is a large area of wetland environment in the south."
This means that Qin Shihuang did not excavate the entire artificial lake, but on the basis of the original wetland, transformed the water body on the east side into a water surface landscape.
The amount of work is obviously greatly reduced.
Xu Weihong believes that the Lanchi water area is not just a "landscape project" of Qin Shihuang, it also has the functions of dividing different areas of the city, draining floods from the Weihe River, and storing surface water.
Archaeological excavations have also confirmed that there are relics of handicraft workshops around the Lanchi water system, so this water system actually solves the problem of water used for handicraft production.
Stills from the movie "Song of Qin".
The end of Qin Palace
But whether it was a palace or an artificial lake, it was eventually obliterated in history with the war of the end of Qin Dynasty.
According to the records of "Historical Records", Xiang Yu "burned the Qin palace, the fire will not go out in March".
Whether the fire has been burning for three months, we cannot verify today.
But judging from the results of archaeology, it is certain that the palace of Qin Xianyang City was burnt.
The aforementioned palace site No. 6, which is considered to have "functions as a government affairs hall", has been confirmed to have been severely damaged.
What needs to be pointed out is that there are two distinct divisions in the ruins of Qin Xianyang City that can be identified today.
One is the official palace area, and the other is the economic function area in the southwest of this area.
Archaeological excavations confirmed that during the War of the End of Qin Dynasty, the official palace area was severely damaged and complicated.
The palace building has a lot of signs of being burnt.
Take the previously excavated Qin Xianyang Chengfu building ruins as an example. The floor of the main building room was red or blue-gray due to the fire, and the ground was partially bumpy, showing obvious signs of disturbance.
The burnt roof collapsed and piled up on the ground disturbance pit, reflecting the order of building damage as the disturbance in the room first and the arson burning later.
However, the economic function area of the Xianyang city site was not destroyed on a large scale during the War of the End of Qin Dynasty.
Stills of the TV series "The Great Emperor of Han Wu".
Xu Weihong told reporters, “Judging from the current archaeological results, the economic function zone should have been extended to the Western Han Dynasty. There was no trace of man-made arson at all, showing a very natural age change.”
Alternate Qin and Han, Han inherited Qin system.
The Han Dynasty renovated and expanded the new capital as Chang'an City in the southern area of Xianyang City in Qin Dynasty, and established Weicheng County and Lingyi as the satellite cities of Chang'an City in the north.
Xu Weihong said that in the early Western Han Dynasty, the former site of Xianyang City in the Qin Dynasty left a lot of traces of human activities, which may be "related to the construction of the Han tombs." It was gradually destroyed.
(Finish)