Details of Marble door of Dingling
In front of
the antechamber, central chamber and rear chamber stood huge white marble
doors, all similar in appearance.
Each door
slab weighed four tons and was made of a whole piece f marble, 3.3 meters
high and 1.7 meter wide. It was 40 cm thick at the hinges, but tapered
off towards the middle to reduce the pressure on the pivots, so that
the heavy doors could be opened easily. A bronze crossbeam
of about ten tons was installed on the top to ensure the two heavy panels.
The
self-acting stone
The ¡°self-acting stone¡±, 1.6 meters high, was used as a stone block
in each chamber to shut the door from inside. Its lower end was placed
in a hole in front of the door while its upper end leaned against
the back of the door. Then the door couldn¡¯t be opend from outside.
How
the was poened from outside?
With the four-cm-wide gap between the two door slabs, people doing
the excavation work managed to open the door by fitting in a wire
to hold the stone block and use a piece of plank to push it down.
The ink-writing on the first stone block reads: ¡°The self-acting
stones of the seven doors in the palace are not yet tested.¡±
Hense the name ¡°self-acting¡± stone.
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