The female corpse from Mawangdui in Changsha, over two thousand years old, her skin still elastic

In 1972, in Changsha, Hunan, a mound called Mawangdui was excavated, revealing a Han dynasty tomb. Inside was a female corpse, a marchioness from the early Western Han named Xin Zhui, who died at around fifty years of age, over two thousand one hundred years ago.

What is most astonishing is that her body was preserved remarkably well: her skin was moist and soft, her muscles elastic, her joints still movable, her eyelashes, hair, and fingerprints all intact, and there was even blood in her vessels, typed as A. The doctors who performed the autopsy said her internal organs were all there, as if she had died not long ago.

She lay within four layers of coffins and outer coffins, with a layer of red liquid inside the coffin that had seeped into her clothes, and she was covered outside with thick white plaster and over a thousand jin of charcoal.

As to why she did not decay, for decades many have speculated: excellent sealing, almost no oxygen; deep burial with stable temperature; the coffin liquid was acidic and may have contained mercury and other components that could inhibit bacteria. To this day, no explanation fully accounts for it.

During the autopsy, doctors also discovered many details of her life: she had gallstones, arteriosclerosis, coronary heart disease, and eggs of schistosomes and pinworms were found in her body. Most unexpectedly, one hundred and thirty-eight melon seeds were found in her stomach and esophagus, indicating that not long before her death she had eaten melon. The studying doctors speculated that she may have died of a sudden heart attack after eating melon.

Her remains are now preserved by the Hunan Provincial Museum, kept in a specially prepared liquid.

A large quantity of silk, lacquerware, and bamboo slips were also unearthed from her tomb, many looking as if they had been made yesterday. A piece of silk painting, red background with black lines, placed over her coffin, depicting heaven, earth, and the human world, is one of the most famous Han dynasty artworks today.

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