The mausoleum of Empress Dowager Bo was stolen. Why do the tomb robbers always hold on to the Han tomb?

Why do tomb robbers always hold on to Han tombs? According to our understanding as outsiders, there must be many treasures in Han tombs. But someone gave a specific explanation based on their understanding of Han tombs. There is a joke in the archaeological community: out of ten Han tombs, nine are empty. From the end of the Western Han Dynasty to the end of the Western Jin Dynasty, almost all the tombs of emperors of the Han Dynasty were spared. The tomb stolen this time was the tomb of Empress Dowager Bo Ji, the mother of Emperor Wu of the Han Dynasty Liu Heng. Although some cultural relics have been recovered, some are still damaged and lost. The Mausoleum of Queen Mother Bo was stolen in 2016 and was not discovered until 2019.

The official explanation for this is that the security work of the Queen Mother's Mausoleum was lax, daily inspections were sloppy, and the mass defense force was weak. The relevant personnel have been punished. The Mausoleum of Empress Dowager Bo is very large, even inferior to the imperial mausoleums, and the surrounding maintenance measures are also in line with the national key cultural relics maintenance standards. However, due to insufficient management personnel, some iron gates were left unguarded, allowing interested people to sneak into the mausoleum area. Therefore, the main reason for the theft case is poor management and protection.

The tombs of Han tombs are tall and easy to attract attention. The average length of imperial tombs in the Western Han Dynasty was thirty meters. The mausoleum of Emperor Wu of the Han Dynasty is 46 meters high. Such a large tomb is simply a sign for tomb robbers. However, some emperors did not give the tomb robbers a chance. Most of the tombs were built on the mountains. They could not afford to seal the soil, did not build sleeping halls, and left no traces on the surface. Some emperors did not even disclose the hiding place.

In the tomb, in addition to the main tomb chamber of the tomb owner, there are many rich tomb pits. There are also clusters of burial pits in the Han Dynasty Mausoleum, where various human figurines, animal figurines, chariots and horses, and living utensils are buried. There are hundreds of tombs in the tombs of Emperor Han Dynasty, Liu Fuling of Emperor Zhao of Han Dynasty, even thousands of tombs, and the Queen Mother's Mausoleum is no less. These treasures are not as good as those in the main tomb chamber, but they still make greedy tomb robbers pity them. . The cultural relics in the tombs are China's five thousand years of inheritance, witnesses of history, and precious treasures of the Chinese nation. They should be owned by the country. However, due to the greed of tomb robbers and the ineffective protection and obstruction of law enforcement by relevant departments, the cultural relics have been lost. .