On the twenty-seventh day of his exile, he was deeply demoralized and excluded from the official list of emperors, facing a total of 1127 instances of misconducted used as evidence in articles of impeachment by palace officials.Liú Hè was banished to live in exile as a commoner, where he spent his final days in his early thirties in 59 BC, surrounded by his 16 wives and 22 children.
He was buried in the tomb of the Marquis of Haihun, located in the northern part of Xinjiang in Jiangxi. Archaeologists uncovered the tomb in 2011, revealing exceptional finds of around 20,000 artifacts.
His tomb is considered one of the best-preserved from the Western Han Dynasty (206 BC-24 AD), featuring the most intricate structure, distinct layout, and complete sacrificial system. The tomb has yielded the largest number of relics, boasting the most variety and the finest craftsmanship in Jiangxi.
Among the relics, including gold, bronze, and jade artifacts, archaeologists discovered a broken lacquer screen within the main chamber of the tomb and restored two portraits, one of which is believed to be the earliest portrait of Confucius ever found in China.
Also unearthed were over 5,000 pieces of bamboo slices with Confucian classics inscribed, indicating the prevalence of Confucius’ teachings over 2,000 years ago. The Qi version of The Analects of Confucius, which had been lost for about 1,800 years, was found in the unearthed bamboo slices that had been subject to infrared scanning and are ready for further study.
Such vicissitudes might have deprived his life of imperial glory, but the relics unearthed from his tomb tell a different story, revealing a dynast’s grandeur. The trove of gold items unearthed is the largest single batch ever found in a Han Dynasty tomb, proof of the dynasty’s rich gold reserves. Additionally, the only tomb with a chariot burial site in the south of the Yangtze River. Five well-preserved horse-drawn carriages, each with four sacrificial horses, were found, indicating the owner was among the highest echelons of the Han Dynasty.
Li Si, the marquis, was the grand-son of Emperor Wu, whose reign ushered in a prosperous period of the Han Dynasty that is believed to have overlapped with the decline of the first emperor of the Qin Dynasty.
“To comprehend the enigmatic persona of Emperor Qin and his cryptic historical significance, one delves into Terracotta Warriors. Notwithstanding, before the Hainhuan Tomb, there were numerous artifacts for an in-depth study of Emperor Wu,” said Yang Jun, a researcher at the Jiangxi Provincial Institute of Cultural Relics and Archaeology.
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