The Western Xia Tombs

The Tangut empire of the Western Xia ruled northwestern China for two centuries, with its own script, a system of six thousand characters modelled on Chinese but unreadable to a Han scholar. Genghis Khan died during the campaign that destroyed it in 1227; his successors carried out methodical destruction, and the dynasty vanished from official Chinese histories. What remains, across forty square kilometres at the foot of the Helan mountains, are nine imperial tombs and two hundred and fifty secondary graves, rammed-earth mounds eroded into cones.