The Unesco Courier December 1979 [antikvár]

A Chinese emperor's clay army by Gu Wenjie IN March 1974, villagers from a people's commune near the city of Sian in Shen§i province, China, were responsible for one of the century's most extraordinary archaeological finds. While drilling a well they struck, not water, but a tunnel which turned out to be filled with an army of life-size warriors, horses and chariots, all modelled in terra-cotta. The clay phalanx, several thousand strong, was found buried just over a kilometre east of the tomb of the Emperor Qin Shihuang (Chin Shih Huang), the ruler who unified China's warring states over 2,000 years ago. When all the pieces have been lifted from the earth, restored and put on display in a permanent museum, they may capture the world's imagination aS strongly as the other monumental achievement for which the mighty Emperor is remembered, the Great Wall of China. The villagers reported their discovery to the authorities and a team of archaeologists was called in to supervise scientific excavations of the area. They discovered a subterranean pit, 210 metres long by 60 metres wide, filled with pottery figures. A preliminary dig over an area of 1,000 square metres revealed 520 clay warriors (each bet- k ween 1.78 and 1.87 metres high) and" For two millennia, a 6,000-strong legion of life-size warriors, modelled In clay and complete with weapons, horses and war chariots, have kept a silent, subterranean vigil over the tomb of Qin Shihuang (Chin Shih Huang Ti), a fitting escort for the man who built the Great Wall and ruled from 221 to 210 BC as the first emperor of a unified China. This long-buried army is gradually being uncovered at a site to the east of the emperor's tomb, near the city of Sian in Shensi province. The legion was interred in battle array in a huge earth and timber vault. As the photos (exclusive to the Unesco Courier) on these two pages show, not all the figures survived Intact the collapse of the roof following a fire caused by a rebel army three years after the emperor's death, and their shattered remains are now being painstakingly pieced together by Chinese archaeologists. The site is protected by a huge hangar which will eventually become a permanent museum. GU WENJIE, of the People's Republic of China, is a specialist in archaeology and a staff reporter of China Features.-