It is known to all that there are 13 Ming Tombs in Beijing, but only three of them are open to the public including Ding Tomb, Chang Tomb and Zhao Tomb. So what about other tombs? Yong Tomb is the most mysterious tomb among them because many people believed that the Yongle Canon was buried in the tomb with the Jiajing emperor.

The Yongle Canon was edited during the Yongle Period in the Qing dynasty. With more than 370,000,000 words, the canon is a combination of more than 3,000 books of history, science, art, literature and so on. It was referred to as the biggest encyclopedia in the history by Encyclopedia Britannica. However, the authentic one was missing and the copy is scattering everywhere and there is no completed one that exists in the world now.

It is said that the emperor Jiajing loved this Canon very much and the copy of this canon was still unfinished when he died. People believed that’s why he was not buried for a long time after his death. It is likely that the emperor made a will that he wanted the canon go with him and the successor tried to make a copy of the book.

However, according to the remote sensing, that the Yong Tomb was full of water now which means that the canon may be heavily eroded by water if the authentic book was buried here. It is still having an uncertain factor before the dig of the tomb. Let’s hope the scientists can find ways to reveal the truth.