Dimensions
129 x 197 x 23mm
Legend has it that in 206 BC the first Emperor of unified China, Ch'in Shi Huangdi, decreed that after his death his body would be clothed in jade and cast adrift in a lake of mercury. The lake, within a pyramid, was to be protected by an everlasting army.
Like Tutankhamun in Egypt, Lord Pacal in Mexico and Viracocha in Peru, Shi Huangdi taught the super-science of the sun and the higher orders of spirituality. They say that after he died he became a dragon that flew to the sun to live forever.
In 1974, archaeologists discovered the first of more than 8,000 life-size terracotta warriors buried near the pyramid tomb of Shi Huangdi, confirming that the legend was more than myth. But why were they massive soldiers, each weighing more than half a tonne, buried there at all? Was it simply to guard the emperor in the afterlife?
With his knowledge of how and why the ancients encoded information into their treasures, super-sleuth engineer and scientist Maurice Cotterell decodes the long-lost secrets of China's terracotta army to reveal the farewell message of the first Emperor - the remarkable secrets of heaven, hell and immortality.