Clues point to Prince Gao in new look at Qin Shi Huang’s tomb

A 15-ton casket excavated last year near the mausoleum of Qin Shi Huang may belong to Prince Gao, the emperor’s son whose contested succession has long figured in the legend of the First Emperor. The find, part of a widening body of evidence about the scale and contents of the emperor’s burial complex, raises fresh questions about how much of the empire his tomb was meant to symbolize and how the royal family was interred alongside the ruler.

The casket’s interior and its surrounding artifacts include roughly 6,000 bronze coins, along with jade, silver and gold figurines, cutlery and porcelain crockery, and pieces of armor and weapons. While the owner remains unconfirmed, the discovery has intensified discussion among researchers about the famous historical account that Prince Gao demanded an honorable death and burial with his father. Oxford University associate professor Hui Ming Tak Ted says the new material gives scholars a rare opportunity to test the reliability of Sima Qian’s account in the Records of the Grand Historian.

Testing to identify the casket’s owner is still in early stages and rests on circumstantial clues. A skull fragment recovered from the burial remains has been dated as male, with an estimated age of 18 to 22 years at death, aligning roughly with the late Qin period. The youngest artifacts recovered so far also fit that timeframe. But researchers acknowledge that a royal signet or personal seal—clear proof of the casket’s occupant—has not yet been found, leaving the link to Prince Gao tantalizing but not definitive.

Beyond the casket, new surveys illuminate the broader context of the emperor’s mausoleum. Soil tests in the 1980s revealed unnaturally high levels of mercury, historically known as “water silver” for its silvery sheen and toxic properties. Later gravity-mapping and electrical-resistivity studies have reinforced the mercury narrative, with phase-anomaly signals suggesting metallic conduits or containers beneath the soil. Some researchers see these signals as potentially marking the positions of rivers or other royal-era features, while others caution that geology can yield misleading patterns. Still, Chinese scientists note that cinnabar sources near Xunyang — where mercury ore was mined in antiquity — coincide with the kind of chemical signatures found in the tomb’s vicinity, bolstering the theory that mercury was used to preserve the site and deter theft.

State media have cited analyses that large quantities of mercury may exist within the mausoleum, with some reports claiming as much as 100 tons detected in the complex. Proponents of the preservation-and-defensive-use theory point to cinnabar’s role in traditional rites and in the legends surrounding the emperor’s quest for immortality, a pursuit that historically drove alchemists and priests to pursue mercury-laden solutions. Critics of the mercury narrative stress that measuring mercury in an unfinished burial landscape is fraught with interpretation, and they call for continued, careful sampling and cross-checking with independent laboratories.

The broader degree of the emperor’s burial project also remains under study. The central mausoleum has been surveyed but not excavated, a decision reflecting both the risk of disturbing a culturally and historically sensitive site and a caution about over-interpreting non-invasive data. The heart of the complex is described in some accounts as an enormous chamber — hundreds of feet on each side — with the outer planc arrangements described by later chroniclers as a vast, life-size replica of the empire he conquered. In one description, the chamber is measured at 262 feet by 164 feet, within a site described as 1,640 square feet at its core. The apparent mismatch underscores the challenges of reconciling ancient texts, modern geophysics, and on-the-ground archaeology, but it also hints at the magnitude of what the emperor intended to convey in stone, bronze and earth.

The link between the casket and the emperor’s son sits within a longer arc of discovery dating back to 1974, when farmers digging a well near the Mausoleum of the First Emperor unearthed a life-size terracotta army that expanded what historians had believed about Qin Shi Huang’s project. Subsequent excavations revealed offices, stables, and halls filled with figures of officials, acrobats, laborers, and life-size bronze animals. The scale of the underground world — with thousands of figures that mirror a conquered world — has prompted researchers to reassess the reliability of the Han-era historian Sima Qian, who wrote about the enormity of the mausoleum and the elaborate “map” of rivers, seas, and the heavens used to replicate the world above ground.

“The first thing he did when taking the throne at age 13 was order the construction of an immense mausoleum,” notes a scholar cited in recent reviews, and the new evidence provides a rare chance to test a legend that has wobbled between history and myth for more than two millennia. “For the first time in 2,000 years, we have a chance to figure out if what Sima Qian wrote is correct,” says the Oxford associate professor.

Despite the compelling nature of the finds, experts caution that the story remains provisional. The skull fragment confirms a plausible sample but does not prove direct kinship to the emperor. The absence of a signet or seal means researchers cannot positively identify the casket’s owner without additional, corroborative artifacts. Still, the overall picture — the casket’s rich contents, the unexpected breadth of the tomb complex, and the persistent mercury narrative — is reshaping how researchers interpret Qin Shi Huang’s mausoleum and the legend that has surrounded him for centuries.

As scientists analyze more material and compare results with the tomb’s non-invasive surveys, scholars and historians are expected to refine the timeline of the emperor’s burial rites and the development of the burial plan described in early Chinese chronicles. The work also has implications for understanding how the terracotta army was deployed as a symbolic map of imperial power, and how such artifacts matched the social and political realities of the late third century BCE.

A second image appears later in this article to contextualize the landscape around the tomb and the scale of the discoveries involved:

Looking ahead, researchers plan targeted DNA and isotope testing on human remains recovered from the site to help determine familial connections and origins. Geochemical mapping will continue to refine where cinnabar and other minerals were sourced and how their distribution aligns with ancient mining networks. Archaeologists emphasize that refining the chronology and tying specific artifacts to recognized historical figures will require additional discoveries, such as a personal seal or a corroborating inscription that links a piece of regalia directly to Prince Gao or another royal line.

The story of Qin Shi Huang’s mausoleum, and the legends that have grown around it, continues to evolve as science peels back layers of time. The combination of a massive, well-preserved burial complex, a wealth of grave goods, and the stubbornly stubborn quest to connect a single casket to a named heir offers a rare window into how dynastic power shaped burial practices and how historians interpret a ruler whose life has become legend as surely as his tomb has become a monument.