"To this day, archaeologists still feel they have not arrived at the final answer on the terracotta warriors; what were they meant to do?" - historian Edward Burman in Terracotta Warriors: History, Mystery and the Latest Discoveries
Standing archer, Qin dynasty (221–206 BCE), Photo: © Mr. Ziyu Qiu
The 2,000-year-old terracotta warriors of China are an enigma and some say the eighth wonder of the world.
What led the emperor Qin Shihuang to create an estimated 8,000 soldiers and 130 chariots with at least 520 horses, then bury them for the afterlife? And what else is left to discover?
New Zealanders’ fascination with the warriors dates back many years.
Our long-time ambassador to China Tony Browne remembers visiting China’s ancient capital of Xi’an with then Trade Minister Brian Talboys with a few hours to kill when they got an invitation to view the early diggings of some just-discovered clay figures.
I have seen them twice – once in an almost empty hangar-like museum in the months after 1989's Tiananmen Square protests (when tourists were few) and again earlier this year amongst the thousands who flock to see them each day.
Each time I've been astonished at their number, the scale and their individuality.
This December, an exhibition of eight warriors and two horses called Terracotta Warriors: Guardians of Immortality opens at Te Papa.
It will be the second time the warriors have been displayed in New Zealand after a sold-out an exhibition at the Auckland Art Gallery in 2003.
English scholar Edward Burman, too, has been hooked by the warriors.
He has lived in Beijing and Xian since 2003, working in business, lecturing at British and Italian universities and written some 18 books on European history.
Burman clearly loves Xi’an, the home of the warriors.
His 2016 book Xi'an Through European Eyes led to him being offered a place on a municipal foundation restoring the city’s magnificent city walls.
Now he's produced the timely book Terracotta Warriors: History, Mystery and the Latest Discoveries about Xi'an's enduring mystery and greatest tourism earner.
The Terracotta Warriors were rediscovered in March 1974 by six brothers, named Wang, who were digging a well outside Xi’an in Shaanxi province.
One struck a stone head in the earth, then limbs, torsos and bronze arrowheads.
Villagers feared the figures were demons or deities that would bring bad luck.
Eventually, word of the find reached the curator of a small museum.
Things exploded when a Beijing journalist heard about the figures while visiting his family and wrote an article about them.
It was read by a vice-premier of the State Council who ordered a team to investigate the site and report back.
They expected it to take a week, but archaeologists are still digging today.
Terracotta warriors in ordered ranks Photo: Supplied
The Wangs, who barely profited from their find – and once had a stall signing autographs outside the museum – had inadvertently stumbled on a corner of the mausoleum of the first Chinese emperor Qin Shihuang.
Hugely ambitious and capable, yet death-obsessed, Qin Shihuang was the ruler who finally united the warring states of China in the third century BCE.
The site of the mausoleum was previously known – historian Sima Qian, who lived in the years after Qin Shihuang, described its size and the army of workers who constructed it.
But both the warriors and the mausoleum were forgotten until the Wangs' find.
What they discovered was astonishing – in one large pit, thousands of life-size warriors standing in formation, in another, horses and chariots.
Diggers discovered in another pit, figures of acrobats and weightlifters.
In another, they came across the bodies of 20 women, probably around the age of 30, who were likely to have been concubines.
They discovered buildings around a central mausoleum, likely to represent official offices, mimicking those in real life.
A grassy hill nearby is likely home to the mausoleum of Qin Shihuang, which is supposed to contain a central tomb that mirrors the celestial heavens and a map of China with rivers of mercury reflecting the country’s great rivers.
Today, the mausoleum remains unopened in case a sudden in-rush of humid air harms the tomb inside.
These astonishing details are and well-told by Burman in Terracotta Warriors: History, Mystery and the Latest Discoveries
He is strongest when he moves beyond the details of the warriors to try to sketch what led to their creation.
He is also very good on the philosophy that would lead an emperor to create figures for the afterlife.
It is presumed the warriors are an army to protect the emperor, but Burman also examines other theories – are they both military and courtiers drawn up in ranks not just for battle but for an imperial show? After all, many are unarmed.
Burman examines why would you bury such an army.
The figures were created from pieces, fired in giant kilns, that are moulded to look somewhat individual – there are about eight different looks.
These are placed in ranks in pits below ground but above the water table level.
To the ancient Chinese, water was a symbol of life, says Burman, so the figures were suspended below our earthly world but above life-giving water.
Wooden roofs were built on top and then the pits covered.
When the Qin Empire fell a few years later, some of the pits were burnt, others smashed and still more simply collapsed over time.
Burman interviewed archaeologists who told him the idea was not that the warriors would come back to life, but rather that they would continue to exist in order to serve the emperor in a shadow afterlife.
If Emperor Qin had power and prestige in the afterlife then he would be able to influence the course of events of the living, it was believed. He could live on and be a highly influential ancestor to his successors.
But, alas, it didn’t work.
A close up of one of the terracotta warriors Photo: Supplied/Jeremy Rees
The Qin Empire collapsed four years later, possibly worn out by the extraordinary public works Shihuang embarked on – the beginnings of the Great Wall, huge canals and a national road system, as well as his own palaces, mausoleum and terracotta warriors.
The historian Sima Qian claims that 700,000 people were press-ganged into work at the mausoleum.
While many historians think that was unlikely and that Sima Qian is badmouthing Qin Shihuang for the succeeding Han era, Burman argues it may have been possible – though financially draining.
Add in convicts, labourers, tithed peasants and the military and you could have reached 700,000 workers, he writes.
Burman's is a timely book, with the upcoming visit of the Terracotta Warriors to Te Papa.
But it is not always an easy read – some descriptions of modern scientific work on the warriors can be dense and academic.
Some sections can be a labour to get through.
The section on how Emperor Qin, a middleweight power during the Warring States era, came to dominate and then unite China, is not an easy read.
Imagine several hundred years of struggles against multiple foes in a dozen pages. At times, I went looking for maps and a glossary. But it is worth persisting.
Burman’s argument is that while Qin Shihuang did finally unify China, it had been a long time coming.
The Qin, well-organised and run by a succession of tough martial kings, dukes and, in one spectacular case, a Dowager Queen who rose from being a favourite concubine to the toughest ruler of them all, had been on an upward trajectory for some time.
First, they picked off the smaller states, slaughtering the vanquished armies as a warning.
Then they turned to their powerful rivals.
This is where the legend of the Stone Cow Road, China’s Trojan Horse, comes from.
Shihuang’s great-great-grandfather is said to have outwitted the Shu to the south by creating five stone cows, covered them in gold and diamonds, and then presented them to the witless king on one condition; his army were given safe passage to build a road to drag them into the Shu capital.
The rest, as they say, is history... and slaughter.
Finally, Qin Shihuang united the remaining states and declared himself emperor.
All lined up: The terracotta warriors in Xi'an Photo: Supplied/Jeremy Rees
He was said to have the voice of a jackal and the heart of a tiger – ruthless, disciplined and fearless except for one overpowering terror. Death.
Courtiers were banned from mentioning the word.
He sent emissaries to search for the elixir of everlasting life.
He visited an island three times because it was supposed to have a Mountain of Immortality.
He had tunnels built between his palaces so he could not be assailed by evil spirits.
He travelled around his new empire, trying to impose order on it but also seeking hints of immortality.
He was fascinated by the magical properties of mercury, the only metal that is liquid at room temperature, an element that seems to defy what it is.
And Qin Shihuang planned for the afterlife.
Qin studied the mausoleums of his ancestors and other leaders – grand affairs with chariots, horses, concubines and officials buried alongside them.
He determined, as befitted the first emperor and one who held the Mandate of Heaven, that his would be bigger and greater.
Burman is very good on the massive escalation of Shihuang’s mausoleum.
Others had buried chariots, he would bury a cavalry. There would be archers, performers, generals, officers.
There had been terracotta figures in royal graves before, but they were inches high, not life-size.
Burman has a theory on the shift in size – that word had filtered down the Silk Road of the life-size statues in Greek outposts at the Asian limits of Alexander the Great’s empire. It feels a stretch.
Armoured general (detail), Qin dynasty (221–206 bce), pottery, height 196cm. Excavated from Pit 1, Qin Shihuang tomb complex, 1977. Emperor Qin Shihuang’s Mausoleum Site Museum, 002524. Photo: © Mr. Ziyu Qiu
Burman is good at bringing the research on the warriors up to date.
Scientists have begun to reveal the original colours, surprisingly lifelike and vibrant, which have been leached away in the soil.
The warriors have faces that mirror the characteristics of all parts of China that Qin Shihuang had conquered.
And how archaeologists are using almost cushions of air above the diggings to preserve the terracotta pieces as they are removed from the soil after 2000 years, rather than contaminated suddenly by polluted or humid air.
The number of tombs that have now been discovered, stretching across the plains around Xi’an, was also a revelation.
New pits are still being found. But, to this day, says Burman, archaeologists still feel they have not given the final answer on the terracotta warriors; what were they meant to do?
Qin Shihuang’s tomb was to be colossal, monumental so the Qin state and all its vassals bent to work.
Then, after barely ten years as China’s first emperor, he died.
Four years later, the Qin state was aflame.
Without the martial power of Qin Shihuang and with the land exhausted by taxes and building, peasant rebellions erupted and the Qin dynasty was over.
The first emperor was just 49 when he died.
Ironically, it may have been the mercury that killed him through severe poisoning.
The tomb was sealed, the warriors buried, the marvels of all that labour interred. And life continued.
Burman pieces together the funeral rites; the killing of the workers on the tomb, the reading of the eulogy of the emperor, anointing his body with rare oils and then slowly lowering his body into the tomb.
“No-one was allowed to watch as the tomb was sealed. When a deep roll of drums sounded to indicate that the process had been completed, the main procession turned and moved westwards towards the capital….A small number of workers remained to complete the task of covering the open part of the mausoleum, after which they were themselves interred under the supervision of the Under-Secretary for Sacred Ceremonies who now stood alone with a few members of his staff...The occasion was sombre, but it must also have been magnificent among those mountains” - historian Edward Burman in Terracotta Warriors: History, Mystery and the Latest Discoveries