Xi'an Terracotta Warriors

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Today I visited the Terracotta Warriors just outside Xi'an. They were found in the 1974 by a couple of local farmers who were drilling holes looking for water. One day they drilled down and pieces of pottery came out, so they notified authorities and excavations began. One of the farmers was actually at the museum when I visited, so I have included a photo of him - he's pretty old now but he was answering questions from Chinese tourists about his find and its impact on China.

There are three halls of warriors and they increase in size. The first is very small and most of the warriors were broken when a supporting roof beam collapsed, but there are intact horses and horsemen in this pit. The second is much larger but has been unexcavated as the roof beams have collapsed in many places and the archeologists don't yet have the technology to excavate the pit without causing further damage to the army below. The third pit is by far the most impressive, and really took my breath away. There were terracotta warriors, most whole and all with different shaped bodies and very different facial features, stretching out in hundreds of rows. The figures include warriors, chariots, horses, officials, acrobats, strongmen, and musicians.

The Warriors were commissioned and buried by Qin Shi Huang the First Emperor of China. In burying this lifesize army he was preparing for his afterlife where he planned on being as powerful as he was in this life. It's thought that construction of Qin Shi Huang's mausoleum began in 246 BC and involved 700,000 workers!

The thing which really got my imagination working was that I hadn't previously realised quite how much of the site was not yet uncovered. There is a distance of 2km between the Emperor's tomb and the pits, and some archeologists believe that space is filled with the bodies of his concubines, pets and other treasured possessions Qin Shi Huang would want in his afterlife.

Although he was such a powerful man it becomes really clear as you walk into the largest pit that the first Emperor of China also lived in real fear of what would happen to him after his death, enough so to spend years preparing for the event.

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