Speaking of and Guo Moruo , I believe everyone is familiar with it. He was one of the "cultural masters" of the 20th century, and his articles are often selected into textbooks. As a famous writer and historian in our country, Guo Moruo should have gained the respect of countless people.
But in fact, the reputation of this "literary giant" is extremely poor. Lu Xun once said that he was a "rogue genius", and some people ridiculed him: "Looking at a dog from a distance, looking at Guo Moruo up close."
Why Guo Moruo is often criticized by the world? There are two main reasons: one is that he abandoned his wife and children several times, and his private life was in chaos; the other is that he once forcibly led people to dig Dingling , resulting in the destruction of cultural relics in the tomb. Serious, causing heavy losses to the Chinese archaeological community.
In 1956, Guo Moruo and others, despite strong opposition from the outside world, insisted on applying to the State Council to excavate the Ming Dingling Tomb in the name of studying Ming history. A year later, Dingling was excavated, and the archaeological team indeed found many precious cultural relics in it.
However, due to the limited archaeological technology at the time and the lack of sufficient preparation by the archaeological team, many national treasure-level cultural relics were oxidized due to exposure to air as soon as they were unearthed, resulting in irreparable deterioration and damage. This was the biggest tragedy in Chinese archeology. The country was deeply saddened by this, and since then it has issued a decree prohibiting the active excavation of emperors' tombs.
What is even more bizarre is that it is said that after the excavation of Dingling Tomb was completed, many archaeological experts who participated in the excavation of the tomb died in mysterious circumstances. Many people believe that they were cursed for digging up tombs and deserved this retribution for destroying people's tombs and disturbing people's rest.
After the Dingling Incident, Guo Moruo was dubbed a "grave robber" by the Chinese people. To this day, Guo Moruo is often reviled by the Chinese people because of the Dingling tragedy.
But what many people don’t know is that Guo Moruo was not actually the leader in the excavation of Dingling. It is true that he participated in the excavation of Dingling, but he should not be blamed for this tragedy alone.
On the way to the outing, he had a whim and insisted on excavating the imperial tombs.
Around 1955, Guo Moruo, Deng Xiaoping, Li Fuchun and Wu Han went to the Ming Tombs for an outing. On the way, Wu Han suddenly suggested that it would be better to excavate the imperial tombs, which would not only promote Scientific archeology can also help our country study Ming history .
As a historian, Guo Moruo was extremely obsessed with cultural relics, so he naturally supported Wu Han's idea. After hearing this, other leaders also felt that this proposal had some truth, so they asked Wu Han to go back and draft a report to take a look.
"A Personal Experience of Dingling Excavation" records the report drafted by Wu Han and sent to Guo Moruo, which proves that Wu Han was the real leader in the excavation of the imperial tomb.
After Wu Han completed drafting the report, he signed the report together with Guo Moruo, President of the Chinese Academy of Sciences, Minister of Culture, Chief Editor of the People's Daily, and Director of the Third Institute of the Chinese Academy of Sciences, and submitted it to the Prime Minister.
Seeing that the report listed the great significance of the excavation of imperial tombs for archaeological research, and that every line in the report was full of confidence in this archaeological operation, the Prime Minister chose to believe these scholars and approved the application of Wu Han and others.
But don’t get me wrong. The imperial tomb they applied to excavate this time is not the Dingling Tomb, but the largest and best-preserved tomb among the Thirteen Tombs of the Ming Dynasty - Changling Tomb of Emperor Chengzu of the Ming Dynasty Zhu Di.
Wu Han, Guo Moruo and others who were approved to excavate Changling quickly organized an archaeological team, but they encountered difficulties before they started digging. One of the reasons Wu Hanluo listed for digging up Changling was that Changling had never been stolen, and the cultural relics in the tomb must be well preserved. What’s funny is that he only considered the rich archaeological value of Changling, but did not think deeply about why Changling was not robbed. Tomb robbers visited.
If you want to go to the tomb, you must first find the entrance. However, the archaeological team searched carefully outside Changling for several months and still could not find the entrance to the underground palace. After receiving feedback from the workers, Wu Han, Guo Moruo and others thought about it again and again, and finally gave up Changling and applied to dig Dingling, which was smaller and had some collapse.
suffered heavy losses due to backward technology. The whole excavation of Dingling
Compared with the previous few months outside Changling, the archaeological team made rapid progress when digging Dingling. Within a few days of digging Dingling, they We found the entrance to the Dingling Underground Palace.
After spending a year digging, on May 19, 1957, the archaeological team finally discovered the King Kong Wall outside the Dingling Underground Palace. As soon as this news came out, the entire archaeological world was shocked. Archaeologists from all over the world rushed to China to prepare to witness the unearthing of Dingling cultural relics.
After opening the door of the underground palace, the Chinese archaeological experts walked in excitedly. Immediately, the exquisite murals on the walls of the underground palace caught their eyes. Due to lack of experience, the archaeological team did not realize that the air they brought in when they entered the underground palace would destroy the cultural relics in the underground palace. As they continued to walk into the tomb, no one cared that the murals around them were slowly disappearing.
Emperor Wanli and two queens were buried in Dingling. Their coffins are the primary target of the archaeological team. After passing through the front hall and searching the side halls, the archaeological team never found the coffins of the three people. Just when they were wondering, someone finally discovered the three coffins displayed in the back hall.
The archaeological team was so excited when they saw this that they opened the coffin without any protective measures. In this way, the emperor wearing tapestry dragon robe was unpreparedly exposed to the air. Looking at the emperor's dragon robes and accessories, the archaeologist's face was filled with smiles. Such exquisite, precious and complete Ming Dynasty military uniforms , what an archaeological discovery this is.
But their smiles could not last long, because they immediately discovered that the precious silk fabrics on Emperor Wanli and the two empresses were rapidly deteriorating at a speed visible to the naked eye from the moment they opened the coffin, and disappeared before they were released from the coffin. . Although the archaeological team was sad, they could only watch the cultural relics being damaged.
Twenty-nine vermilion lacquer wooden boxes were placed next to the coffin. The archaeological team came forward to open them one by one and inspected them. They contained jewelry, gold and silver, porcelain, weapons, wooden figurines, calligraphy and paintings, etc., each piece Expensive, many are rare treasures.
In fact, China's archaeological technology and cultural relic protection awareness in the 1950s were not enough to support archaeologists in excavating imperial tombs, but the inexperienced Guo Moruo and others did not seem to realize this. After discovering the empress's coffin and the surrounding funerary objects, the archaeological team did not stop digging, and the excavated cultural relics, especially precious and fragile things such as calligraphy, paintings, and silk fabrics, were not properly preserved.
Among the more than 3,000 cultural relics unearthed in Dingling, the silk fabrics are probably the ones with the most archaeological value. Before the excavation of Dingling, we could hardly see Ming Dynasty silk fabrics. However, in Dingling, the archaeological team discovered a large number of complete and bright silk fabrics.
In order to preserve these silk fabrics, archaeological experts used chemicals. In addition, the warehouse conditions for temporarily storing cultural relics were poor. Within a few months, the newly unearthed Ming Dynasty silk fabrics turned black and deteriorated. Today, most of the silk fabrics unearthed at that time are in fragments and have lost their original charm.
Cultural relics are left unattended. Anyone who offends the imperial tomb will be punished by God?
A few years after the opening of the Dingling Tombs, many archaeologists in the archaeological team were forced to leave their posts due to historical reasons. The opened imperial tombs were shelved, and the precious fabrics and wood unearthed quickly dried up and rotted due to lack of care.
The most outrageous thing is that the coffins of Emperor Wanli and his two empresses were abandoned outside. The nearby villagers picked up the coffins and split them into pieces to make furniture. The bones of the three emperors and empresses were burned to pieces by ignorant people. net.
Not long after, there were rumors that the child of the family who had picked up the emperor’s coffin to make furniture died inexplicably in the cabinet made of the coffin. Many of the staff who participated in the excavation of the tomb also died mysteriously due to various reasons. . Everyone said that these people must have suffered retribution because they offended the dead soul of Emperor Wanli.
However, after investigation, it was discovered that the cabinet where the deceased child was located was very deep, and there were liquid objects stored inside the cabinet. It is very likely that the child ran in for fun and found that he could not get out. He opened the cabinet door again when he was struggling in a panic. It was closed, and it happened that the child was the only one at home at the time, with no one to rescue him. This led to the child eventually dying of lack of oxygen in the cabinet.
The death of other archaeologists is even more difficult to relate to Dingling. Birth, old age, illness and death are normal. Archaeological experts are mostly older people. Even if they do not dig Dingling, they will one day die for various reasons. die. In addition, if they were really punished for offending the souls of the dead, why did Wu Han, who lived to 69 years, and Guo Moruo, who lived to 78 years, live in peace and harmony?
It is not tomb robbing, it is a costly scientific archeology.
Due to some misleading rumors, the actions of Guo Moruo and others to dig the Dingling Tomb were characterized by many people as "tomb robbing", and Guo Moruo personally took most of the blame. Voice. Looking at the Dingling incident rationally, Guo Moruo and others' trip was definitely a scientific archaeological excavation. They later made a very detailed scientific excavation report and established the Dingling Museum.
As the first and only archaeological excavation of imperial tombs in Chinese history, Dingling archeology has indeed promoted the progress of Ming history research as Wu Han, Guo Moruo and others thought.
The Dingling Incident was a costly trial and error in the history of Chinese archeology. However, it was precisely because of the painful lessons gained from this incident that the country realized that it was not advisable to proactively excavate imperial tombs, and other imperial tombs were also avoided from being excavated by archaeologists. fate.
Understanding is constantly moving forward on the basis of practice. Of course we can criticize Guo Moruo and others for hastily excavating the imperial tombs and failing to protect the cultural relics. After all, they were clearly behind in technology and inexperienced, but they targeted them as soon as they took action. The complex and precious imperial tombs are really pretentious.
But there is no need to blame Guo Moruo alone. He even called the excavation of Dingling Tomb "tomb robbing". The cultural relics we can see in museums and the pictures and texts in history books cannot do without archaeologists. their efforts.
