The Terracotta Warriors of Emperor Qin

What is it for?

Some of the 7,000 terra-cotta warriors Emperor Qin had built to protect his tomb.

Many cultures have sent their dead to the afterlife with the necessities of daily endeavor and the trappings of honor. Dishes, food, thrones, and barges have been excavated over the years. Pets, wives, concubines, and servants have gone to serve their masters in the next life as they served in this one. Death was perceived as a prolongation of life, and an Emperor’s mausoleum was his afterlife palace, mirroring the magnificence of his palatial life on earth. Lavishly provisioned with silks, musical instruments, servants, food and drink, tombs held everything for a well-lived life. As an old Chinese saying instructs, "treat death as life." It would be natural then, for war-plagued emperors to make their tombs battle ready.

In China, sometime during the late 1920s, a peasant unearthed a life-sized terracotta sculpture of a warrior, while digging a well. Once the entire figure was uncovered, the water filling the well suddenly drained away. This was regarded as an evil omen and the statue was reburied. Then in 1974, peasants sinking a well for the Yanzhai Commune uncovered part of a pit of life-sized terracotta soldiers and horses. They had discovered a portion of the burial retinue of the first Emperor of China, Qin Shihuang.

Who is Qin Shihuang?
The first Emperor of China and founder of the Qin Dynasty, Qin Shihuang (259-210 B.C.), was known as a conqueror, an enlightened leader, a merciless tyrant, a builder, and a destroyer. During his 29 years of rule, he united the country after five centuries of strife and transformed the land into what we now call China. He instituted a centralized government that lasted until 1911, standardized currency, set up a code of law, a uniform system of weights and measures, and standardized script. He built a network of roads leading from his capital city of Xianyang, and linked protective walls built to deter raiding nomads into 3,000 kilometers of the Great Wall that now stretches for 6,000 kilometers.

In keeping with the grandeur of his life, the First Emperor had a lavish internment. Qin was entombed in Lintong County, Shaanxi Province about 35 kilometers east of the city of Xi’an. Qin ordered an entire army to protect his mausoleum, which lies still uncovered at Mount Li.

Although it had been customary to put the servants of a king to death so that they might serve him in the afterlife, human sacrifice was less common by the time of Qin’s death. Rather than sacrifice an entire army, he was buried with a symbolic force of detailed, life-sized, terracotta soldiers and horses assembled to protect him in the next world.

Excavation of Qin's Tomb
The excavation near Qin’s tomb uncovered four pits, originally paved with bricks, lined with a framework of wood and earth and roofed over. Three pits containing a total of nearly 8,000 figures have been unearthed so far, and a fourth empty pit was found. Each pit is possibly a separate component of a single army. The soldiers are organized according to the military conventions of the time.

Pit #1, the largest, contains mainly infantry. Nearly 1,000 of an estimated 6,000 figures of armored and unarmored infantrymen, bowmen, crossbowmen, archers, and charioteers have been unearthed.

Pit #2 is smaller, with a more complex layout of military personnel divided into four units of archers, chariots and cavalrymen, approximately 1,000 soldiers, 400 horses and 80 chariots in all.

Pit #3 contains 68 figures which probably represent a command unit of officers.

The Eternal Army
Qin’s soldiers are well proportioned and stand slightly taller than average height for the period. His gifted artisans were able to give the eternal army a feeling of being just about to move. This aura of "motion in stillness" was achieved by postures of the figures, alertness of the expressions, and arrangement of the army as ready to march into battle. Contributing to this feeling is that one must climb into the excavation and actually walk among the soldiers to view them closely.

The figures were made by using a combination of molds and hand sculpting. The heads, for instance, were each cast from one of perhaps a dozen different molds, then hand sculpting of the eyes and noses, the addition of a variety of mustaches, eyebrows, ears, hair, and headgear provided individual distinctions.

In this way one head mold could produce a group of faces that had little or no similarity.

In the same way, a variety of limbs and armor could be combined to produce an infinity of individual soldiers. Constructed from a delicately textured clay, and painted after firing, Qin’s army must have provided a very imposing and realistic presentation. The paint has flaked off over the centuries, but remaining traces show that there were different color schemes, perhaps distinguishing army units.

The faces of Qin’s army have been classified into as many as 30 types but each was individually expressive, alert, intelligent, resourceful, and sincere, reflecting the personalities of ideal warriors.

Weaponry
Ready for combat, the imperial terracotta armies carried actual weapons, bronze double-edged swords with wooden scabbards, crossbows, bows, halberds, spears, and pikes. They had the most complete accouterments to fight a contemporary battle. Qin’s mounted unit had square two-wheeled chariots with bronze fittings harnessed by V-shaped yokes to four horses. Finely sculpted according to the equine ideal of the day, a large, vigorous breed of horse outfitted with fine saddles served the cavalry. The lack of stirrups testifies to the skilled horsemanship of Qin’s army.

Above and beyond any other legacies the emperor may have left behind, the terracotta armies survive as incredible works of art. Intricate details in armor, facial features, rank insignia, and positioning offer us a rich library of historic information and a peek into a segment of life in the early years of the Chinese empire.

Adapted from,
The Chinese Emperors Eternal Armies
by B.K. Davis

Related Books
The Qin Terracotta Army: Treasures of Lintong
Emperor's Silent Army

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