The Terracotta Army
The Man Who United China
Ying Zheng, who became king of the state of Qin at the age of thirteen in 247 BC and went on to conquer the six rival kingdoms of the Warring States period by 221 BC, did not think small. He took the title Qin Shi Huang — First Emperor of Qin — and proceeded to impose a single administrative system, a standardised script, a unified system of weights and measures, and a common currency across a territory that encompassed most of what we now call China proper. He built the first unified version of the Great Wall, connected his empire by roads and canals, and standardised the gauge of wagon axles so that wheels would fit the ruts in every road. He was, by almost any measure, one of the most consequential rulers in world history.
He was also, by the end of his reign, consumed by a fear of death that drove him to increasingly extreme measures. He employed alchemists to prepare elixirs of immortality, dispatched ships to search for mythical islands in the eastern sea where deathless sages were said to live, and executed ministers who raised the subject of death in his presence. He died in 210 BC during an inspection tour of his empire, probably from mercury poisoning — the element he had been consuming in medicinal preparations intended to grant him eternal life. He was forty-nine years old.
The Necropolis Beneath Mount Li
The construction of Qin Shi Huang's tomb complex began, according to ancient sources, in the year he became king — meaning it was under active construction for roughly thirty-seven years. The historical text Shiji (Records of the Grand Historian), written by Sima Qian about a century after the emperor's death, describes the tomb in striking detail: an underground palace with ceilings studded with jewels representing the stars, rivers of mercury representing the waterways of the empire, crossbow traps to kill anyone who entered, and mountains of bronze. Modern surveys of the sealed burial mound at Mount Li, near the city of Xi'an in Shaanxi province, have detected anomalously high mercury concentrations in the soil, consistent with Sima Qian's description.
The burial mound itself — a roughly square earthen pyramid about 76 metres tall and originally much higher — has never been opened. The Chinese archaeological authorities have declined to excavate it, citing both technical limitations and a policy that irreplaceable monuments should not be disturbed until conservation science has advanced sufficiently to preserve everything that might be found. Geophysical surveys have revealed extensive underground structures, but their contents remain unknown.
The Discovery of the Pits
The terracotta army was found not inside the burial mound but in a series of pits roughly 1.5 kilometres to its east. The discovery was accidental. In March 1974, farmers digging a well near the village of Xiyang in Lintong County struck fragments of fired clay figures and bronze arrowheads. Local officials reported the find, archaeologists were dispatched, and what they uncovered over the following years turned out to be one of the most extraordinary archaeological discoveries of the 20th century.
Pit 1, the largest, measures approximately 230 metres long and 62 metres wide and contains an estimated 6,000 figures arranged in battle formation — infantry in the front ranks, chariots and cavalry behind, with rearguard units at the back. The figures stand roughly life-size (infantry average about 1.8 metres tall) and are arranged in eleven corridors separated by earthen partitions that originally supported timber and reed roofing, now collapsed. Pit 2 contains cavalry, chariots, and infantry in a more complex tactical arrangement. Pit 3, smaller than the others, appears to represent a command headquarters. A fourth pit was found but contains no figures — construction apparently stopped when the emperor died.
Each Figure a Portrait
What made the terracotta army immediately famous, and what continues to astonish visitors, is that the figures are not identical. Each has an individualised face. Hairstyles vary. Ranks are distinguished by different types of armour, headgear, and footwear. Infantry wear different shoe designs from cavalry. Officers are taller and more elaborately equipped than foot soldiers. Kneeling archers adopt a standardised shooting posture, but their faces differ. The figures were produced in a complex workshop system: bodies were assembled from standardised parts — torsos, legs, arms, heads — but the heads were individually modelled, painted, and fired before assembly. Traces of original paint survive on some figures, showing that what is now terracotta-coloured was once bright red, green, blue, and black.
The weapons the figures originally carried were real weapons, not ceremonial replicas. Bronze swords, spears, crossbow mechanisms, and arrowheads have been recovered from the pits, many still sharp. The bronze alloys used show sophisticated composition — some arrowheads were coated with chromium-based compounds that provided corrosion resistance and have kept them pristine for over two millennia. The techniques involved remain a subject of active research.
Beyond the Army
The terracotta warriors are the most famous element of the Qin Shi Huang necropolis, but they are not the only extraordinary component. Other satellite pits within the wider complex have yielded bronze chariots of exceptional craftsmanship — two half-scale models of the emperor's personal vehicles, with horses, drivers, and canopies rendered in extraordinary detail — bronze birds (cranes, swans, and ducks) arranged in a simulated landscape, acrobats and musicians in terracotta, and the remains of officials and servants buried alive or killed to accompany the emperor. The scale of the entire complex, now understood to cover an area of roughly 56 square kilometres, dwarfs any royal funerary complex outside of Egypt.
The site was damaged in antiquity. The rebel general Xiang Yu, who fought to overthrow the Qin dynasty after the emperor's death, reportedly sent soldiers to loot the pits and burn the wooden roofing. The resulting fire caused the roofs to collapse and the figures to topple, breaking most of them into the fragments that archaeologists have spent decades reassembling. It is estimated that conservation work on the figures already excavated will take generations to complete.
Visiting and Access
The Museum of the Terracotta Warriors and Horses of Qin Shi Huang, which opened in 1979 and has been expanded multiple times since, is located about 30 kilometres east of Xi'an. The three main excavated pits are covered by large hangars that allow visitors to walk along the edges and observe ongoing conservation and excavation work. The museum receives several million visitors annually, making it one of China's most visited heritage sites. UNESCO inscribed the site on the World Heritage List in 1987 as part of a broader listing that includes the entire Mausoleum of the First Qin Emperor.
New excavation campaigns continue to expand understanding of the site. Survey work has identified the locations of dozens of additional satellite pits within the wider necropolis, most still unopened. The burial mound at the centre of the complex remains sealed, its interior preserving — or so archaeologists hope — one of the ancient world's most extraordinary underground chambers. Open the map to locate the site within the wider landscape of ancient China and explore the region's extraordinary concentration of archaeological heritage.