Liu He was not a very accomplished emperor in history. He is best known for his arrogance and absurdity, which caused him to be ousted from the throne in just 27 days. However, he was a rare lucky man. He was not assassinated after being demoted, but continued to live a prosperous life until he died of normal old age. Moreover, his tomb has gone through thousands of years, but no "underground gentleman" has ever succeeded, but it has been left almost intact to this day.
At first, the local government received a report and found a hole left by tomb robbers in a nearby mountain. When experts arrived, they discovered that this tomb was not a simple Han tomb. All signs pointed to the legendary Haihun Hou Liu He, who had been promoted from king to emperor and then deposed as a marquis. After the overall investigation, experts were pleasantly surprised to find that this is the most well-preserved tomb with the richest burial objects where the Han Dynasty marquises ascended the throne.
In addition to the 15-meter-long robbery cave discovered by the villagers, experts also found an ancient robbery cave from the Five Dynasties period. Neither of them succeeded in carrying out the theft plan. The reason is, on the one hand, luck, and on the other hand, it is also thanks to the earthquake. During the Eastern Jin Dynasty, an earthquake occurred here, causing nearby counties to be submerged by Poyang Lake. Floods of water filled the tomb chamber, which made it more difficult to rob the tomb. The lack of oxygen also allowed most of the fragile cultural relics to be preserved to this day.
Tens of thousands of precious cultural relics have been unearthed here, most of which require complex processing and protection and will not be displayed publicly. It took 5 years, but still not all the cultural relics in the tomb have been sorted out, which shows that Liu He was buried with many objects. It is naturally filled with all kinds of living devices and musical instruments, and there are also many bronze and jade ritual vessels.
In the tomb chamber, scholars counted nearly 2 million "five baht coins" copper coins, with a total weight of more than 10 tons, which is not a small amount at any time. A few days later, they found an equally astonishing amount of gold, including dozens of "horseshoe gold." It can be seen that although Liu He was deposed, he still lived a prosperous life and received rewards from the new emperor from time to time without being mistreated.
Grave robbers who only seek money will definitely be ecstatic about these, including the antiquities they are eager to acquire. What they are most concerned about is still how high the price can be sold, rather than the historical accumulation of the cultural relics themselves. Yun. Archeology is different. As an industry dominated by the state, it is almost impossible to invest money in it without getting any returns. Scholars can only marvel at the amount of money. Their focus is on the ancient monetary units and circulation contained in it. specifications at the time.
What really surprised scholars most about the Haihunhou Tomb was the information recorded on the more than 5,000 bamboo slips and other cultural relics subsequently found. At first, after cleaning up the northwest corner, no one knew what a pile of dark debris was next to it. If expert Wu Shunqing hadn't recognized it as bamboo slip fragments at a glance, these most precious objects would have been discarded as ordinary garbage. Clear away. Since the inside of the bamboo was severely decayed, it took us two months to prepare a solvent that could strengthen the structure so that it could be carefully removed and identified.
We know that the "Book of Songs" encountered the Qin Dynasty and derived different versions of the "Four Poems". At present, only Mao's poems have survived to this day. The same is true for "The Analects of Confucius". After a large number of physical books were burned, ancient literati could only rely on memorization and secretly passed it down from generation to generation. The pronunciation of different places is different, and there are often mistakes in recitation. This gave birth to two versions of the Analects of Confucius, of which "Qi Lun" has two more chapters than "Lu Lun".
In the Han Dynasty, a prince occupied the old residence of Confucius in order to expand the area of ??his palace. As a result, a large number of Confucian writings were found in the walls, including another version of the Analects of Confucius, which was named "Ancient Lun" 》. What we can see so far is mainly a combination of Lu Lun and Gu Lun, while Qi Lun has been lost for 1,800 years. There is one more essay found in the tomb this time than now. While this makes scholars ecstatic, perhaps students in the future will have to memorize one more text.
The same is true of "Historical Records". Sima Qian followed a rigorous attitude towards history and also wrote a biography of Emperor Wu at that time, but it was deleted very early and we have no way of knowing the content. In addition, later scholars also suspected that other parts of the historical records were deleted due to political needs and were not the author's original intention. According to an unearthed document recording the process of repairing the tomb, we know that when Liu He died, 32 years had passed since the completion of the Historical Records. This means that the revisions of the Historical Records discovered this time are definitely not large, and it is even very possible. It's the original version.
As for other bamboo slips, ancient books such as Yi Xue and medicine are also recorded. Many of them were lost to later generations and only the titles of the chapters are known, or they were changed beyond recognition in the process of inheritance. In short, this batch of bamboo slips has epoch-making significance in edition science.
As for the life of Confucius, there is a screen in the tomb. The birth time of Confucius recorded on it is different from all existing ancient books, and is 15 years earlier than the famous historical records. This will also rewrite the understanding of all Confucian and historical researchers.