Chapter 12 Qin’s last army

In 1974, some workers were making a well in the ground near Xi’an in China. They were looking for water, when they hit something hard in the ground. It was the head of a soldier – not a real soldier, but a soldier made of terracotta. They took the soldier out of the ground. He was two metres tall, and he was beautifully made. And he was not alone. There were more soldiers under the ground, and horses, and weapons. The workers were looking for water, but they found an army.

The army was made more than two thousand years ago for a man called Ying Zheng – a man who changed the world. At that time, China was not one country but seven different countries. Ying Zheng’s father was king of one of those countries.

When he died, Ying Zheng was only thirteen, but he followed his father as king. And he started to make two armies. He made his first army to fight for him while he was alive. And he made his second army to fight for him when he was dead.

He used his first army to fight against the other six countries of China. After twenty-five years, in 22 1 BC, he was an emperor – a king of many countries. He changed China from seven countries into one country – the country that it still is today. And he changed his name. His new name was Qin Shi Huang Di, the First Emperor of China.

But his second army was not ready yet. This army – the terracotta army – took more than thirty years to build. And he used 700,000 people to build it for him. They made more than 8,000 terracotta soldiers, each one with a different face, each one like a real person. And they gave each soldier real weapons to defend their emperor. They made horses for the soldiers to ride. They made people to play music for him, and dancers to dance for him, and birds to fly around his head. And

when they were ready, the emperor put them all into the ground around his tomb.

We know that this is true because we have found some of these things under the ground. Many of them are still under the ground. By 2010, nearly 1,900 of the soldiers were out of the ground; the rest are waiting for us to bring them out. We have found the soldiers who defend the tomb; but we have not opened the tomb itself. Not yet.

There is an old story about the tomb. About a hundred years after the death of the First Emperor in 210 BC, a man called Sima Qian wrote about the emperor and his tomb. He said that the tomb was as big as a city, with streets and houses, and an army to defend it. He said that the houses were made of gold and other kinds of treasure. For two thousand years, no one thought that his words were true. But we have found the emperor’s last army. What secrets are still waiting for us in his tomb?