Construction of the First Emperor's mausoleum and Terracotta Army
- Date
- c. 246–208 BCE
- Category
- Culture, arts & philosophy
- Region
- China (Shaanxi)
- Era
- Classical Antiquity
- Significance
Beginning around 246 BCE, shortly after the young king of Qin took the throne, work began on a colossal funerary complex near Mount Li (modern Lintong, Shaanxi). According to the historian Sima Qian, hundreds of thousands of conscripted labourers laboured for decades on the necropolis.
Its most famous component, discovered by well-diggers in 1974, is an underground army of an estimated 8,000 life-sized terracotta soldiers, along with horses, chariots and weapons, arranged in battle formation to guard the emperor in the afterlife. Each figure was individually finished, and the figures were originally brightly painted. The scale of the project reflects both the immense resources the unified Qin state could mobilise and the First Emperor's preoccupation with immortality and the afterlife. The tomb mound itself remains largely unexcavated. The site is one of the most significant archaeological discoveries of the twentieth century and a UNESCO World Heritage Site, offering an unparalleled window into Qin military organisation, craft technology, and imperial ideology.
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Empires active in c. 246–208 BCE
- Maurya Empire322 BCE – 185 BCE
- Roman Republic509 BCE – 27 BCE
- Odrysian Kingdom480 BCE – 46 CE
- Seleucid Empire312 BCE – 63 BCE
- Ptolemaic Kingdom305 BCE – 30 BCE
- Kingdom of Kush1070 BCE – 350 CE
Related culture, arts & philosophy events
- Panini composes the Ashtadhyayi, the first systematic grammarc. 400 BCE
- Zeno of Citium founds Stoicism in Athensc. 300 BC
- Compilation of the Daodejing and the rise of Daoismc. 4th century BCE
- Plato founds the Academy at Athensc. 387 BCE
- Trial and execution of Socrates399 BCE
- Herodotus completes the Histories, founding the writing of historyc. 430–425 BCE
Further reading
The wider story
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