The history of imperial China is classified according to dynasties, starting from the second millennium BC. A fundamental breakthrough in Chinesehistory occurs with the reign of the first emperor of Qin, who succeeded in unifying the country in 221 BC. His capital was in Xianjang, today in the Xi'an metropolitan area. Qin's name is famous worldwide due to an astonishing archaeological discovery: the so-called Terracotta Army. The Terracotta army is a colletion of thousands of life-sized terracotta statues of warriors. There are more than 8,000 soldiers, together with hundreds of chariots and horses, located in 3 huge underground pits. No doubt, more have to be discovered. The statues are life-sized and made out choosing among several different possible faces, hairstyles, uniforms and so on, so they practically look all different from each other. They were originally painted with bright colours, most of which have disappeared. The statues are dsiposed in rows, ready for a battle, guarding the eastern flank of the Emperor's mausoleum. Today however, their weapons are no more in place, and it is believed that most of them were looted already in ancient times. There are not only warriors' pits: other excavations have revealed a rich – and sometimes puzzling - symbolic equipment for the emperor's afterlife. First of all, a pit containing two half-sized bronze chariots, with all probbaility representing the emperor's official procession. Further, a rectangular pit was found containing thosuends of stone pieces which, when assembled, reveal to form stone armors. Yet another pit contains terracotta statues of acrobats and musicians. Last but not least, a small bronze lake surrounded by bronze water birds of different species has also been found. The mausoleum is located in Lintong, not far from the ancient capital. The tomb lies beneath a huge burial mound of rammed earth, which constitutes an unmistakable landmark denoting the funerary landscape of the Emperor. The tomb is not excavated, but the Chinese historian Sima Qian describes it as a microcosm endowed with vaults representing the heavenly bodies and a miniature of the empire – including rivers made out of mercury – on the ground. In any case, there is no doubt that the first Emperor's building program, and in particular that regarding his own tomb, served political and symbolical ends. The tomb was positioned near the sacred peak of Mt. Li, which dominated the Wei River from the south. The mound was itself referred to as a “mountain”, and was thus meant to be a replica of nature, over which the owner of the tomb exerted his power and control. However, the base plan of the mound is square and oriented to the cardinal points, as well as the pits of the terracotta warriors. We thus see in the project an overwhelming symbolic importance of cardinal orientation on Earth, connected as it was with the “cosmic” order in the heavens, which formed the core organizing principles of Chinese cosmological thinking. The emporor conceived of himself as the earthly representative of the tutelary gods of heaven and thus was pivotal in the proper functioning of the earth and its inhabitants trough a mandate of the heavens. In particular, astronomy and power were deeply and intimately connected, and the function of the celestial pole as “pivot” of the sky was equated with the centrality of the imperial power on Earth. As a result of the celestial identification of the Emperor, the whole polar region of the sky was identified as a celestial image of the Emperor’s palace, the “Purple Enclosure”, bounded by a circle of about 15°, and many stars of the enclosure received a name symbolically related to this identification.
