Posted on Monday 1 December 2003 to Story So Far

I'm wondering whether we need to establish a new stand-alone category of Darwin Award just for ancient Chinese monarchs...

Zhao Mei, known as "the King of Nanyue (South China)", may have been a victim of his own "pills of immortality." The king may have died after taking the elixir of life he tried to make more than 2,000 years ago, senior archaeologists said Monday.

Archaeologists found many "pills of immortality" inside Zhao's tomb yesterday in Guangzhou, capital of South China's Guangdong Province, after they dug out the ancient tomb for archaeological studies

The five-colour pills which reach a diameter of 1.8 centimetres are actually made of sulphur, crystal, red realgar, calaite and alunite, archaeologists said. Two large stoves used to make "the pills of immortality" were also found.

The pills which ancient Chinese kings and emperors used to take to avoid growing old were actually poisonous, said Wang Fang, a professor from Zhongshan University, in South China. Archaeologists and experts will continue testing Zhao's bones and the pills to prove the king did in fact die of the elixir, Wang said. [link]

There is a theory that it was an elixir of immortality just like this that carried off the most fearsome Chinese monarch of them all, Qin Shi Huangdi.

More about the tomb of Zhao Mei.