马王堆英文介绍

Mawangdui Han Tomb

We all know that China has a long history of 5000 years, but how can we learn our extensive and profound history? There are two main ways. One way is by reading historical documents. The other way is by the exploring of ancient tombs. Therefore, in order to let us know more about our history, I will introduce a tomb called Mawangdui Han Tomb. First，I will give you a brief introduction of this tomb. Mawangdui Han Tomb is located in Changsha Hunan Province in the middle of China, which belongs to the Prime Minister Li Cang and his family members in Changsha State of the early Western Han Dynasty. From 1972 to 1974, archaeologists have excavated 3 tombs of Western Han Dynasty. The structure of the tomb is magnificent and complex. Coffin chamber is at the bottom of the tomb which is composed of outer coffins, inner coffins and crosser. Around and above the wooden coffin filled with charcoal and white plaster. The burial objects are very precious which contain silk manuscripts, silk painting, lacquer, traditional Chinese medicine and other things more than 3000 sets. It also unearthed a well preserved woman’s body and the earliest prescription books copied on silk- "52 sick parties".

Then, let us see some details of the tomb.

After cleaned up the tomb, people found the coffin. The coffin is actually a huge suite with four layers. The outermost is a solemn plain

black coffin, without any decoration. The second layer is a black lacquer coffin full of mysterious atmosphere, which paints complex cloud scrolls with golden color on a black base, and intersperses with 111 monsters or immortals. The third layer is a vermilion lacquer coffin, which depicts many auspicious patterns with green, brown, yellow and other colors on a red base. There are six dragons, three tigers, three deer, a phoenix and an immortal. Compared with other coffins, this coffin looks more magnificent. The inner coffin is a black lacquer coffin, which is decorated with silk and brocade and the owner’s body is placed in this coffin.

Although the 4 layers of coffin are very exquisite, it is not the most exciting thing. When people opened the lid of the inner coffin, all archaeologists were stunned. One woman’s body unearthed from the tomb, which looked like a fresh corpse. Although it has been more than2100 years, the body is still integrity, part of joints is flexible, and soft tissue is elastic. This is not only the wonder in the archaeological history of the world, but also a miracle of human history. Later, when people dissected the woman’s body, they found some melon seeds in her gut, which revealed the real cause of her death - eating too much melon caused a variety of complications, and eventually led to angina. People discovered a seal with the inscription words -" Xinzhui", indicating that the owner's name of this tomb is Xinzhui. After the processing of computer technology, we recovered the appearance of her young age, and