"Formerly, when the Master [Confucius] was staying in Sung, he saw that Hwan, the minister of War, had been for three years having a stone coffin made for himself without its being finished and said, “What extravagance! It would be better that when dead he should quickly decay away.”

By 246 BCE, Qin Shi Huang, founder of the Qin Dynasty, had conquered the six other states that comprised China proper, ending the era of Chinese history known as The Warring States period, and was enthroned as The First Emperor.  Immediately, The First Emperor began a twofold process of implementing a vast, administrative state, with a tightly controlled and centralized imperial government, alongside the construction of a vast necropolis, spanning some twenty-six square miles, complete with a novel and extraordinary funerary mound in addition to hundreds of thousands of artifacts, structures, and the famed 7,000-man terracotta army.  In many ways, this sprawling necropolis reflected the real-life empire that The First Emperor envisioned after unification, an event that thrust the military genius into the position of absolute rule over millions of people, a broad mix of tribes and ethnic groups, language, technological sophistication, cultures, and traditions.  One archaeological find reveals that The First Emperor, during the process of visiting several sites across his vast empire, had several stone inscriptions that, rather than extoll his own rule, extolled the results that would bring peace and equality to the people, an end to civil wars, and a long and prosperous future for the united Chinese nation. 

To what degree did the necropoleis of early imperial China, found in the hundreds across time and space, reflect the ambitions of Emperors and rulers to construct and demonstrate effective administrative states?  As scholar of early China Jie Shi notes The First Emperor’s tomb mound and necropolis, “perfectly embodies the new notion of empire and the political ambition of the First Emperor”.  This research paper will explore Chinese tombs and necropoleis and their relationship to imperialism, reflect on the excavated pictorial stones and motifs carefully studied in various locations throughout China, and attempt to contextualize the Chinese necropolis in the era of Empire.

Documentarians note the layout of a typical Chinese necropolis as having some features in common, including a perimeter, a central mound, reproductions of the imperial courts, areas of worship and celebratory areas, and a central tomb denoted with a mound.  The complex is typically a graveyard of livestock, servants, and others that joined the buried ruler in his (or her) final resting place.  The terracotta cavalry and infantry stand guard a mile east of the tomb of The First Emperor, buried in the necropolis as a symbol of those defending a unified China against foreign aggression.  The First Emperor’s immortal armies are a reminder of the subjugated East and barrier between invaders and the palace.  Inside the 350-foot-tall mound, which will remain sealed until it can be preserved, the historian Sima Qian records that a scale model of the newly unified Chinese nation was constructed, complete with rivers of mercury.  This cavernous space, with the emperor’s coffin placed at the center, is a mausoleum unrivaled in history where the afterlife was expected to match life before death.  The entire necropolis, called the Lishan Necropolis, is outlined in Image 1 below.

In his essay “Incorporating All for One: The First Emperor’s Tomb Mound” Shi traces the evolution of aristocratic tombs, wavering between “shrine tombs” and “tumulus tombs” over time, which dot China wherever cities rose and fell between the third century BCE and the middle of the second millennia.  Through it all, the necropoleis’ mounds became more terraced and their features more structure-like, incorporating traditional funerary spaces and designs with replicas of places in the imperial cities such as the “pastime palace” or military trenchwork found in The First Emperor’s necropolis.  These changes reflect the fusion of statecraft and Natural Law – neo-Confucianism – that characterizes imperial institutions in dynastic China, as historian Alan Wood notes.  “It was through such institutional devices that the neo-Confucian scholar-officials sought to inculcate in the educated public and the ruler an understanding of the principles of natural law that were believed to unit heaven, earth, and man”.  Importantly, the neo-Confucian concept of ‘li’, or rationalism combined with the contemporary philosophy of Natural Law not only in support of the newly unified empire but also “for ensuring that the ruler did not become a tyrant, [a responsibility which] rested squarely on the shoulders of the scholar-elite”.  As homages to imperial power and governance, necropoleis and the reflection of palace life and geography also embodied the spiritual underpinnings that legitimized imperial rule.  This was especially important to the scholar-elite during the rule of The First Emperor, who is said to have been particularly cruel to captives, slaves, and citizens alike.

Art historian Hung Wu observes, the geography and physical structure of Chinese necropoleis and tombs were designed to convey the notions of spatiality, materiality, and temporality that reinforce these spiritual and political ideals of neo-Confucian, imperial China.  This shift from an object-oriented funerary history to “a space-oriented design” described by poets “as a symbolic universe” and echoing the language of Sima Quan in his historical retelling of the construction and design of the Lishan Necropolis, depicted in Image 2 below.  In this “underworld realm” aspects of Chinese culture including ancestor worship and filial piety, influenced by foreign religious beliefs and practices that would spill into China throughout its early modern history, were brought to life not only by the architecture but also in pictorial “programs” and copious amounts of objects useful there.        

These “auspicious motifs” included murals, such as bird and flower motifs that were popular in the later era tombs and necropoleis of ninth-15th century China, with Buddhist themes and exhibiting technological advances in funerary art reflecting the values and philosophy supporting imperialism and dynastic rule.  Murals and pictorial stones had the added effect, like the structures and other objects found at necropoleis, of easing the transition from life to death for the interred ruler or aristocrat.  Indeed, large pictorial stones are thought to have originated in wooden furniture design and remained as fixtures in tombs, including doors, as vehicles for artistic expression that marked Chinese society.

Taken together then, the grandeur of geography, meticulous architecture, fusion of tradition, neo-Confucianism, and foreign influence, as well as Chinese values depicted in art and stone, the totality of the necropolis may also represent in a shift in ideas and attitudes toward a unified China with a strong central government.  With the advent of contact with new cultures and civilizations, and the specter of war or even foreign invasion, the move to a unified empire and, later, a nation-state was critical to citizens’ safety and prosperity then as it was in building the world power that China is today.  In this way, the necropoleis of China, like the famed Lishan Necropolis, Tomb of The First Emperor, along with the artistic and architectural tradition that influences China today, may embody not only the “new notion of empire and political ambition” but also the hopes, ideas, and expectations of all Chinese people.

References

Buchner, Ann.  "The First Emperor: China's Entombed Warriors." Firelight Productions. Australia. 2011.

Hung, Wu. Art of the Yellow Springs: Understanding Chinese Tombs. London, GB: Reaktion Books. 2015.

Legg, James trans., ed. Li Chi: Book of Rites.  Ch’u Chai and Winberg Chai.  University Books.   Hyde Park, New York.  1967.

Lundwall, John. “Ancient Temples, Mercurial Tombs, and Strange History.” Cosmos and Logos: Journal of Myth, Religion, and Folklore. 2001.

Pearlstein, Elinor. “Pictorial Stones from Chinese Tombs.” The Bulletin of the Cleveland Museum of Art. Vol. 71, no. 9. 1984.

Shi, Jie. “Incorporating All for One: The First Emperor’s Tomb Mound.” Early China. Vol. 37, no. 01. 2014.

Wood, Alan Thomas. Limits to Autocracy: From Sung Neo-Confucianism to a Doctrine of Political Rights. Honolulu, Hawaii. University of Hawaii Press. 1995.