The First Emperor: China's Entombed Warriors

First published on 29 Oct 2010. Updated on 5 Apr 2011.

In 1974, on a communal farm in Yang village in Lintong county, China, a small team of farmers went about the mundane task of drilling a well in a vast but unremarkable mound of red earth. About 15 metres down, one of the farmers uncovered what turned out to be the incredibly detailed sculpted figure of a head. According to some accounts, the relic was taken back to the village to trade for cigarettes. Other accounts suggest the farmers used it as a storage container.

The farmers had, in fact, inadvertently stumbled upon one of the great archaeological discoveries of the modern age: the mausoleum of Qin Shi Huang, the First Emperor of China. The head belonged to a life-size figure of a solider, itself just one of thousands of terracotta figures that have been guarding the tomb of the Emperor, defending him in the next life, for over 2,000 years.

Ten of those figures will be on display, along with 140 other objects, in The First Emperor: China's Entombed Warriors, an exhibition that opens at the Art Gallery of NSW this month. According to Liu Yang, senior curator of Chinese art at the AGNSW, the exhibition provides an insight into a significant era in Chinese history and one of the country's most important historical figures. "He was a very complex character," Yang says. "That's probably the best way to judge him I think."

Proclaiming himself First Emperor of China in 221 BC - the title had been previously reserved for deities and mythical figures - Qin unified China's seven Warring States, established the country's political system and oversaw the standardisation of the national currency, written language and construction of the Great Wall. But he was also a tyrant, driven mad not only by his power but the copious amounts of mercury he was consuming for longevity. He sought to suppress intellectual discourse and eliminate free thought, burning important texts and killing dissenters - including hundreds of Confucian scholars. Among those he ruthlessly executed were the alchemists and court physicians who failed to provide him with an elixir of immortality.

Qin was obsessed by the idea of eternal life, and his mausoleum, built by around 700,000 people over 38 years, was his ultimate immortality project. In the complex, 7,000 life-like, life-size and distinct figures of archers, infantry, cavalry, charioteers and officials stood guard, musicians and acrobats provided entertainment, and bronze swans and cranes frolicked in the royal gardens. Jewels in the ceiling corresponded to heavenly constellations, and rivers - designed to resemble the real rivers that ran through China - flowed with an estimated 500 tonnes of liquid mercury. Even in the next life, Qin presided over his own subterranean empire.

Some historians believe that the designers, architects and builders of the mausoleum - even Qin's concubines - were entombed alive in the mausoleum upon Qin's death in 210 BC. The mysteries of Qin's palace, clearly, were not intended to be uncovered. They might have stayed secret, if not for those farmers chancing upon some fairly unexceptional fragments of terracotta a mere 36 years ago. "Nobody mentioned the terracotta warriors," says Yang. "None of the historical records mention the terracotta warriors. If they weren't discovered by a farmer by accident, still nobody would know."

Qin's tomb itself remains undisturbed though. Archaeologists, for now, respect China's policy of respecting the final resting places of the dead. The First Emperor may yet keep his secrets - or, perhaps, hold on to them for another generation. Darryn King