The Imperial Tomb
The imperial tomb is located on the top of the Seal Hill to the south of Limuzha village to the southwest of Shaoxing. A roughly square mount of 350 meters in length, 300 meters in width and 25 meters in height, the Seal Peak presents flat faces and stands like a seal, thus the name.
The east-to-west tomb has a wooden-coffin in a vertical grave cut out from the rock. Around the hill is a moat that protects the mausoleum, which covers an area of more than 100,000 square meters.
The tomb is protected carefully with a very scientific anticorrosive technology. A 1.8-meter-deep charcoal layer was laid on the huge cave bottom and rammed tight, on which the triangular wooden coffin chamber was superimposed. Then the grave was filled with some kind of compact and tight green-colored clay up to the grave opening. Finally the whole grave and some passageways were tightly covered with yellowish-brown clay in the shape of an inverted funnel.
Based on the research on the large scale, luxury coffin chamber and giant single wooden coffin, the valuable cultural relics as well as the moat in good preservation surrounding the graveyard, mausoleum was built in the later years of the Spring and Autumn Period. According to studies of literatures, the person buried in this tomb was the father of the King Goujian of Yue State.
The tomb is another significant archaeological discovery following Hemudu culture and Liangzhu culture in Zhejiang province. On 13 May 1998, a conference was held by Zhejiang Cultural Relics Bureau and Shaoxing Government. At the conference, the discovery of the Yueguo Imperial Tomb was announced to public and a discussion was held on the protection of the Tomb. It was decided at the conference that valuable relics be protected in their original locations and a Yueguo imperial tomb museum be set up. The Tomb was added onto the list of the 4th batch of cultural relics under provincial-level protection on 30 November 1998 and included in "the 10 new archeological discoveries in 1998".
Source: shaoxing.gov.cn
Editor: Wang Moyan
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