Mawangdui Han Tombs: Lady Dai and Her Treasures in Changsha

The Mawangdui Han tombs are three burials of a noble family of the early Western Han dynasty, dug into a low hill in eastern Changsha, Hunan. Excavated between 1972 and 1974, they belonged to Li Cang, Marquis of Dai, his wife Xin Zhui and probably their son, who died between 186 and the 160s BC. The tombs yielded the astonishingly preserved body of Lady Dai, a famous painted silk banner and a library of manuscripts that changed the study of early Chinese thought.

Discovery and excavation

In 1971 workers digging air-raid shelters for a military hospital in Changsha struck the edge of an ancient tomb. The mound had long been called Mawangdui, the “Mound of King Ma”, after a 10th-century king of Chu, but archaeologists soon realised the burials were far older. Tomb 1 was opened in 1972, and Tombs 2 and 3 were excavated in 1973 and 1974.

The tombs were vertical shafts reaching deep below the surface, with large wooden burial chambers at the bottom. Tomb 1 was packed with several tonnes of charcoal and sealed with a thick layer of sticky white clay, which kept out water and air. Tomb 2 had been robbed and was poorly preserved, but Tombs 1 and 3 were largely intact.

Who was buried there

Three seals found in Tomb 2 identified its occupant as Li Cang, chancellor of the kingdom of Changsha. Han emperors still allowed semi-independent kingdoms ruled by princes or allies, and Changsha guarded the southern frontier with the kingdom of Nanyue. Li Cang was made Marquis of Dai in 193 BC, with the income of 700 households, and died in 186 BC.

Tomb 3 held a man of about 30, buried in 168 BC according to a wooden tablet in the tomb. He is usually identified as a son of Li Cang, though not every scholar agrees. Tomb 1, the richest, belonged to Li Cang’s widow, Xin Zhui, known as Lady Dai. She died a few years after her son, around the 160s BC.

Lady Dai’s body

Lady Dai lay inside four nested lacquered coffins, the outer ones painted with clouds, spirits, dragons and immortals. Her body, wrapped in some twenty layers of silk and hemp clothing, lay in a reddish liquid. When it was unwrapped, the skin was still moist and soft, the joints could be moved and the internal organs survived.

A full autopsy in 1972 showed that she was about 50 years old and around 1.54 metres tall. She suffered from hardened arteries, coronary heart disease, gallstones and parasitic infections including schistosomiasis. Her stomach and gullet held well over a hundred melon seeds, suggesting that she died suddenly, probably of a heart attack, within hours of eating melon in summer.

The reasons for the preservation are still discussed. Most researchers point to the depth of the tomb, the airtight seal of charcoal and clay, the low-oxygen and stable conditions and possibly the chemistry of the coffin liquid. Her body is now kept in the Hunan Museum in Changsha.

The silk banner and the grave goods

Over the innermost coffin of Tomb 1 lay a T-shaped painted silk banner about two metres long. It shows a layered universe. At the top is heaven, with a sun containing a crow, a crescent moon with a toad and a hare, and a deity with a serpent’s body. In the middle an elderly woman, usually taken to be Lady Dai herself, leans on a staff attended by servants, above a scene of offerings. At the bottom is a dark underworld supported by a giant figure. Tomb 3 held a similar banner.

Tomb 1 also contained hundreds of objects intended to supply Lady Dai in the afterlife. They included lacquered bowls, cups and trays, food in bamboo cases, carved wooden servants and musicians, musical instruments, silks and garments. A plain silk gauze robe almost 1.3 metres long weighs only about 49 grams. An inventory written on bamboo slips listed the contents of the tomb.

The manuscripts of Tomb 3

Tomb 3 held a lacquer box of manuscripts written on silk, together with texts on bamboo and wood. Altogether they contain well over 100,000 Chinese characters. Many of the works were unknown or survived only in later, edited versions.

The most famous are two copies of the Laozi, the founding text of Daoism, which are several centuries older than the earliest complete versions previously known. Unusually, they place the section on virtue (de) before the section on the way (dao). The tomb also yielded a version of the Book of Changes with commentaries, political and historical writings, texts on astronomy that track the movements of the planets, a chart of comet shapes, and medical works such as the Recipes for Fifty-Two Ailments. A painted chart of gymnastic exercises and three maps of the Changsha region, including a military map of the southern frontier, are among the earliest of their kind.

Key people

• Li Cang (died 186 BC): Marquis of Dai and chancellor of the kingdom of Changsha under the early Han emperors.
• Xin Zhui (died c. 160s BC): his wife, Lady Dai, whose body is the best-known find from Mawangdui.
• The man in Tomb 3 (died 168 BC): probably a son of Li Cang, buried with weapons, maps and manuscripts that suggest a military and scholarly career.

Myths and facts

Myth: Lady Dai is an embalmed mummy like those of Egypt. There is no evidence of deliberate embalming. Her organs were not removed and her body was not dried; it survived wet and soft because of the burial conditions. Specialists call such remains “wet corpses” to distinguish them from dried mummies.

Myth: The tombs belonged to a king. The old name “Mound of King Ma” misled local people for centuries. The occupants were a marquis and his family, members of the high nobility but not royalty, which makes the wealth of their burials all the more revealing.

Fact: The liquid in the coffin is not fully explained. About 80 litres of reddish fluid surrounded the body. Researchers still debate whether it was placed there deliberately or formed from groundwater and decay products, and what role it played in preservation.

Fact: Similar finds are rare but not unique. A few other Han-period “wet corpses” have since been found in China, including a man buried at Fenghuangshan in Hubei, but Lady Dai remains the most complete.

Timeline

• 193 BC: Li Cang is made Marquis of Dai.
• 186 BC: Death and burial of Li Cang (Tomb 2).
• 168 BC: Burial of the man in Tomb 3, dated by a tablet in the tomb.
• c. 160s BC: Death and burial of Xin Zhui, Lady Dai (Tomb 1).
• 1971: Construction work reveals the site.
• 1972: Excavation of Tomb 1 and autopsy of Lady Dai.
• 1973–1974: Excavation of Tombs 2 and 3 and discovery of the silk manuscripts.

Legacy

Mawangdui is often compared with the Terracotta Army as one of the great Chinese archaeological discoveries of the 20th century. It offered a rare, close view of the daily life, diet, health and beliefs of the Han elite in the decades after the founding of the Han dynasty. The manuscripts reshaped scholarship on Daoism, medicine and astronomy, and the early Laozi texts are now standard references for translators of the Tao Te Ching.

Why it matters

Mawangdui preserves a Western Han household almost intact, from its lady’s body and clothing to the books her family read. Few sites anywhere tell us so much about how people of the ancient world lived, fell ill and imagined the life after death.