This is a collection of terracotta sculptures depicting the armies of Qin Shi Huang, the first Emperor of China. They are a form of funeral art that was used to bury people of influence in ancient China. The first Emperor of China is buried with them to protect him in the after-life.
Below are some interesting facts about the Mausoleum and sculptures.
- There are about 8,000 life size statues of soldiers buried along with the king. That is on average, more than the number of people who go to watch a Kenyan premier league game.
- Have you ever heard of “elixir of life”? Well, it is the immortality bug that seems to bite every great person. Qin of China, spent considerable resources trying to look for it. The Terra Cotta Army was part of this quest. However, he and jehova wanyoni of course unfortunately ended up in the same boat; pushing up the daisies. (Locker room talk; as the Donald would say defending himself how he was grabbing cats; alluded that the almighty wanyonyi was a devout partaker of cold ones from keroche. It would have been dicey offering prayers to him when he had had one too many. Anyway, that’s none of our business).
- Most of the statues measure 5 feet 11 inches tall but some soldiers are as tall as 6 foot 7 inches. Arguably an exaggeration of the soldiers’ heights. All these soldiers were buried underground for 2200 years and were only discovered in 1974.
- The Statues were made to represent all battalions in ancient Chinese Army. Some are plainclothes (spies); others are dressed like the cavalry while others are dressed like foot soldiers.
- The Statues were made by over 700,000 thousand workers who were involved in moulding legs, arms, torsos, and heads etc. which were then assembled together. To understand the magnitude of such numbers, Kenya’s largest stadium in Kasarani holds 55,000 seated sapiens. Qin had 12.72 ‘stadium-fulls’ of labourers for his mausoleum.
- China being the ‘manufacturer of the world’, has managed to recently create several pseudo terracotta armies earning millions of dollars from dumb tourists who don’t do their research. Meanwhile back home in Kenya, a similar situation is in form of the seven men who have been charged with impersonating a certain head of state and fraudulently obtaining Sh10m from a business Mogul who manufactures tyres.
What else have we left out? Feel free to add to the comments section.