The Terracotta Warriors, the secret codes of the Emperor's Army

Maurice Cotterell

Published by Headline, softcover, illustrated


LEGEND HAS IT THAT IN 210BC the first Emperor of unified China, Ch'in Shi Huangdi, decreed that after his death his body would be clothed in jade, cast adrift in a lake of mercury within a pyramid, and protected by an everlasting army. In 1974, archaeologists discovered the first of more than 8,000 life-size terracotta warriors buried near the pyramid tomb of Shi Huángdi, confirming that the legend was more than myth. But why were the massive soldiers, each weighing more than half a tonne, buried there at all? Was it simply to guard the emperor in the afterlife?

WITH HlS 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.