# Scientific reporting revisits Shiji’s mercury-river description of the unopened tumulus

Date: 2018

## The fact

Shiji describes mercury waterways in the tomb. Modern soil-mercury surveys, as reported in scientific news, have been read as consistent with that picture. The tumulus remains unopened. This Fact stores the toxic-tomb report cluster, not a measured public-health outbreak.

## Context

If high mercury is real, it is a conservation and labour hazard for any future excavation, and a possible signature of imperial immortality practice. Confidence stays low-to-medium without an opened chamber.

[Qin Shi Huang](/people/qin-shi-huang) is not the sole author of every later object, law, or museum label that uses the name. Shared work with courts, excavators, printers, spouses, officials, and later states does not erase a documented role, and it does not make an ancient person the signer of a twentieth-century statute.

## Evidence and sources

Official museum/encyclopedia/agency pages and an independent publisher independently describe this instrument.

Official or archival record: Emperor Qinshihuang’s Mausoleum Site Museum (https://www.bmy.com.cn/; Emperor Qinshihuang’s Mausoleum Site Museum).

## Significance

Do not invent a 210 BCE poisoning statistic. Do not open the tomb in prose.

Do not invent a 210 BCE poisoning statistic. Do not open the tomb in prose.

## What is established and what is not

Established as a dated public record of this instrument.

What would change the picture: a contradictory original with a different date or name, or a measured series that can be argued, with lag and alternatives, as a consequence of this instrument rather than of later institutions.

The date is the date of this instrument, not a licence to back-date every later harm or benefit.

## People

- Qin Shi Huang: https://factrail.ai/people/qin-shi-huang

## Drivers

- Health-System Capacity: https://factrail.ai/drivers/health-system-capacity

## Sources

- https://www.britannica.com/biography/Qin-Shi-Huang
- https://www.bmy.com.cn/

## Methodology

https://factrail.ai/methodology

Canonical: https://factrail.ai/facts/cn-mercury-tomb-reports