The Terracotta Army: Eight Thousand Soldiers for the Emperor's Eternity
In 1974, farmers digging a well near Xi'an in Shaanxi Province, China, struck the first fragments of what would prove to be the most extraordinary burial complex in human history: the mausoleum of Qin Shi Huang (259–210 BCE), the first emperor to unify China, surrounded by an army of approximately 8,000 life-size terracotta soldiers, 130 chariots, 520 horses, and 150 cavalry horses — each figure individually sculpted with a unique face, each representing a real soldier in the imperial army. The figures were arranged in military formation across three excavated pits, positioned as they would stand in actual battle deployment, apparently assigned the task of protecting the emperor's spirit in the afterlife and ensuring that the earthly power he had accumulated would accompany him beyond death. When discovered, the figures were painted in vivid pigments — red, green, blue, black, white — all of which faded within minutes of exposure to air after 2,200 years of burial. What survive...