How China’s Terracotta Warriors were nearly destroyed

Mr Shen said it was not clear how Xiang had carried out the arson, but that
the ash at the site indicated a very fierce flame. He added that the fire
seems to have blown out by itself, but that the damage had been extreme.

Today, four main pits of the tomb, which was stumbled over by farmers digging
a well in 1974, have been excavated, but much is yet to be discovered.
Archaeologists are currently working on the third major excavation, which
began in 2009.

In the first and second pits, and in tombs containing stone armour and a
troupe of terracotta acrobats, several figures were “severely burnt and
sunk into the ground where they were found,” said Mr Shen. One of the
destroyed figures, which has just been discovered, was a headless, eight
foot-tall warrior with a huge lacquered leather shield.

Mr Shen said Xiang was angry at the loss of his men to Qin soldiers. “The
Qin army had killed 400,000 soldiers of one of Xiang’s allies, and that
might be the main motive,” he said. “It was revenge, not the need
for weapons, that was the likely trigger,” he added.

Born in what is today Jiangsu province, Xiang died at the age of 30. Before
that, he was famed for his boldness, arrogance, and bad temper.

In one major battle against the Qin forces, he ordered his soldiers to break
their cooking pots and scupper their boats, as a sign of their determination
not to retreat.

Traces of fire damage have been recorded at the site before, but the
revelation that it was a man-made arson is “one of the major
achievements of the third excavation,” said Mr Shen. Previously, it was
suspected that a build-up of gas in the tomb had spontaneously ignited.

“The damage to the tomb is too serious for common grave robbers, and you
can see from the burned ropes that the fire was set in ancient times,”
he added. Archaeologists also found that many of the terracotta figures had
been smashed before the fire.

They also found evidence that the Terracotta Army had a “wing guard”
to protect its flanks from an attack from the side and unearthed 41 figures
that were “very different” from soldiers and may have been
intended to entertain the emperor in the afterlife.

Additional reporting by Valentina Luo

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