Product Code Database
The Epang or Efang Palace was a Chinese palace complex built during the reign of Qin Shi Huang, the first emperor of China and the founder of the short-lived Qin dynasty. It is located in western Xi’an, Shaanxi. Archaeologists believe that only the front hall was completed before the capital was sacked in 206 BC.http://english.people.com.cn/200412/28/eng20041228_168965.html Epang Palace Legends Blasted
The Han dynasty historian Sima Qian does not explain what the name means, but the later commentator Yan Shigu provides three possible explanations. The first is that the name refers to the broadness of the rooms ( fang) of the palace. The second that e is a local name for a hill, and the name is meant to suggest the height of a room on a hill. The third is that the character fang is sometimes pronounced pang, meaning by the side, and the palace was named for being by the side of the Qin dynasty capital Xianyang.
Construction of the palace began in 212 BC and continued after Qin Shi Huang died two years later, although work had to be delayed for a year to focus on the construction of the late emperor's tomb at Mount Li. Qin Shi Huang's son and successor Qin Er Shi has been judged by history to be an ineffectual ruler, leading to a great weakening of Qin's power. After a complicated and bloody series of power struggles, Qin Er Shi was forced to commit suicide by his formerly trusted eunuch Zhao Gao, and thereafter the Qin dynasty collapsed. According to Sima Qian, when the anti-Qin rebel and Chu aristocrat Xiang Yu entered the already-surrendered capital Xianyang a year later in 206 BC, the city was sacked and the palaces of Qin were burned to the ground. While Sima Qian does not mention it explicitly, it was long assumed throughout history that Epang Palace burnt with them.
In his Records of the Grand Historian, Sima Qian described the dimensions of the palace as being 693m long × 116.5m wide, but modern studies of the ruins have shown that its rammed earth foundation platform measured 1,320m east to west, 420m north to south, and 8m in height, making the mausoleum the largest burial complex of a single ruler ever to have been constructed anywhere in the world.Shelah, Gideon (2014). "Collapse or transformation? Anthropological and archeological perspectives on the fall of Qin," Birth of an Empire: The State of Qin Revisited, (eds. Yuri Pines et al, Berkeley: University of California Press), p 129. Archaeologists have suggested the dimensions in Sima Qian's account are meant to be understood as referring to plans for the eventual size of the palace, had its construction not been halted, hence the discrepancy.
Since 1961, the site of the palace has been listed as a Major Historical and Cultural Site Protected at the National Level (1-151).
The palace was also the subject of paintings by the Qing dynasty painter Yuan Yao and the Japanese painter Kimura Buzan, the latter of whom depicted the palace's destruction.
|
|
