Last First Day of School

You read that correctly. We have officially passed the last first day of school ever in my academic career! Now to get that actual career going... *prods Congress* As for the day itself, there was nothing to report. As one of my fellow student-friends reported, it was long, uneventful, and uninformative. This however, its to be somewhat expected. The first week of class is add-drop period, so the class make up often is still fluctuating. Professors then spend most of the first class going over the syllabus. What time is left is spent painting the scenery of necessary background information for the course with a street sweeper.

Of far greater entertainment value is the Terracotta Warriors of the First Emperor exhibit at the National Geographic museum. As a brief history lesson, the Chinese have known for some time the location of the burial mound of the first emperor of China. For reasons of cultural respect, they have never excavated the mound. What the Chinese didn't know until 1974 was that the mound wasn't the only thing the Emperor built as part of his tomb. Turns out that in the Emperor's time, the belief was that after death, the dead must be nourished or whither away; and rulers had to counsel and negotiate for their kingdom's continued good fortune with the spirits that controlled nature and other things. To be effective in his role in the afterlife, the emperor needed ceremonial representations of his earthly affects to defend himself and impress the spirits.

Fast forward to 1974. Farmers were digging a well for water 3/4 of a mile from the burial mound when they broke through the roof of a cavern containing broken terracotta statues of soldiers. They reported the find to the authorities, who took a deep interest in artifacts of the first emperor. Excavation began and 30 years later they are still finding more of the burial complex! In the area of the first discovery, archeologists have estimated that the emperor created an army of 7,000 men and horses and placed them in the most likely place for an attack in the afterlife--3/4 of a mile to the east of his burial mound, ready for orders.

Around his mound, archeologists have uncovered two defensive walls. Inside the outer ring of walls are offices for his empire's administration--including terracotta bureaucrats--stables for his army's horses, a smithy, entertainment halls and lodging for musicians, acrobats, and strongmen, and a special armory for his personal bodyguard. This armory is different because unlike the lacquered leather armor for the infantry, or the iron plates for the officers, these soldiers were armored in stone. The stone is believed to protect against spiritual attack, and would not decay like the other forms of armor.

The statues themselves are each a work of art. Archeologists have determined the probable method of construction as well as the fact that there were 8 facial templates for the soldiers, which the artisans then modified for each soldier to give each one its own unique face. The bodies themselves are in several positions to reflect the varying poses for the varied weapons and positions of the soldiers. There was a small modern fiberglass relief of the believed method of construction (solid legs, coiled terracotta for the chest and arms, and a separate head that was fitted into the neck after firing in a kiln), and a wall about the evolution of the reconstruction techniques since the 70s. Where the first warrior took months to complete as a giant, fragile, irreplaceable and priceless jigsaw puzzle; today the warriors' reconstruction is done first by a 3-D reassembly program on computer, greatly reducing the amount of time required.

The work continues for the excavation of the burial complex, and each recovery/discovery sheds greater and greater light on the world of the first emperor of China.

-Pete