An airport expansion outside Xi’an has led archaeologists to what may be the tomb of Queen Dowager Huayang, a woman whose place in the Qin royal family connects directly to the rise of Qin Shi Huang.
The latest findings, announced by the Shaanxi Academy of Archaeology, identify the Shangzhaoyao Qin mausoleum in Xianyang as a high-ranking royal burial from the late Warring States period.
Image via sanqin.com
Queen Dowager Huayang is currently considered the most likely occupant, though the identification remains provisional.
The site first came under closer investigation in 2018, when archaeologists surveyed protected cultural remains within land designated for the third-phase expansion of Xi’an Xianyang International Airport.
Excavation of the northern section began in 2022, alongside further surveys that gradually revealed the mausoleum’s full layout.
What emerged was far larger than a single tomb.
The cemetery is arranged in a near-square, nested layout, with outer and inner boundary ditches, walls, gates, burial areas, ritual pits, and a large central tomb.
Four sloping passages approach the main chamber from different directions, giving it the distinctive cross-shaped form known in Chinese archaeology as a ‘亚’-shaped tomb.
Image via sanqin.com
From east to west, the main tomb extends about 200 meters.
The burial chamber itself is nearly 60 meters across and more than 26 meters deep; dimensions associated with the highest levels of late Qin dynasty burial practice.
Around it, archaeologists identified 45 accompanying burials, 15 secondary burials, and 62 ritual pits.
Five of the secondary burials even had their own chariot-and-horse pits.
One detail offers a particularly vivid glimpse of the people surrounding the royal burial.
Of 33 individuals from the accompanying graves whose sex could be determined, all were women, most around 45 to 50 years old.
Researchers believe they may have been palace women or workers who served the mausoleum.
The excavations have also produced 258 objects or sets of objects, ranging from pottery and bronze vessels to jade and glass.
Some pottery still carries stamped inscriptions, while a bronze vessel bears the characters ‘宋氏,’ giving researchers small pieces of evidence about the people, workshops, and social networks connected with the cemetery.
Image via sanqin.com
So why Huayang?
Shangzhaoyao is now the fourth known Qin royal mausoleum in this part of the Xianyang plateau.
Its design closely resembles the nearby Sijiazhuang Qin cemetery, about 2.3 kilometers away, and archaeological evidence suggests the two were built around the same time for closely related members of the royal family.
Historical records and Qin burial customs narrow the possibilities further, leading researchers to Queen Dowager Huayang.
Huayang was the wife of King Xiaowen of Qin and the adoptive mother of Zichu, who later became King Zhuangxiang—father of the future Qin Shi Huang.
Her adoption of Zichu helped place him in the line of succession, giving her a small but crucial place in the chain of events that eventually brought Ying Zheng to the Qin throne.
More than two millennia later, an airport project may be helping archaeologists put her name back on the map.
[Cover image via Pexels]
