China, two hundred more warriors from the famous terracotta army of Emperor Qin discovered

TheTerracotta Army of Emperor Qin, the huge group of terracotta statues discovered in the 1970s and made to ideally guard the mausoleum of Chinese Emperor Qin Shi Huang, built in the city of Xi’An in central China, never ceases to amaze. In fact, more than two hundred new sculptures have been discovered, adding to the eight thousand that were already known and thus allowing us to learn more about the immense work created in the third century B.C., more than 2,200 years ago.

The discovery was announced last Dec. 31 by the national news agency Xinhua and comes after an excavation campaign conducted between 2009 and 2019 over an area of four hundred square meters, in the first of eight pits that contained the terracotta army. The new discoveries include twelve horses, remains of two chariots, weapons and even some buildings. According to archaeologist Shen Maosheng, director of the excavations, the statues uncovered with the latest campaign can be divided into two categories based on their gestures: warriors holding spears, who are shown with their right arm bent and wrist contracted, and warriors carrying bows, who instead have their right arm extended. There are also figures arranged in different poses, suggesting that they had different roles in the army, while the differences in armor signal the different ranks of the soldiers. These evidences will also enable us to deepen our knowledge of the organization of the Chinese army at the time of the Qin emperor. Not only that, said Shen Maosheng, the excavations will also allow an advancement in our knowledge of the art and terracotta production techniques of the time.

According to scholars, there would still be six thousand statues to be uncovered in Pit No. 1 (in addition to the six thousand that the same pit has already unearthed). As mentioned, there are currently eight thousand terracotta statues unearthed, making the Qin Emperor’s mausoleum the most important and famous archaeological site in China (so much so that it was declared a UNESCO World Heritage Site back in 1987). Some of the terracotta army statues have also been exhibited abroad, while exhibitions of their reproductions continue to tour the world each year to raise awareness of this extraordinary site.

The statues are striking for their high degree of realism and individual characterization, and according to some scholars may have arisen as a result of contact between Chinese artists and Hellenistic statues produced during the reign of Alexander the Great in Asia. Excavations in the mausoleum are still ongoing (it will still take decades to complete), and the terracotta army is seen each year by hundreds of thousands of tourists who visit the site.

Image: some warriors from the terracotta army (2015). Ph. Credit

China, two hundred more warriors from the famous terracotta army of Emperor Qin discovered

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