Stone Tablets found in Gold-Filled Chinese Tomb tell Remarkable Rags to Riches Tale

Two stone epitaphs found within a 500-year-old gold-filled tomb discovered in Nanjing, China, tell a remarkable story about the tomb owner, a woman named Lady Mei.  According to the tablets, Lady Mei rose from being an “unwashed and unkempt” concubine, to the mother of a Duke who advised on matters of political and military strategy. The spectacular treasures found within her tomb attest to the wealth and power she had acquired in her later years.

The tomb was first discovered in 2008, but the findings of archaeologists from Nanjing Municipal Museum and the Jiangning District Museum of Nanjing City, have only just been translated into English and published in the journal Chinese Cultural Relics.