Shang Dynasty

ca. 1500-1100 BCE

Part of the Bronze Age

Bronze Age = 2000 – 771 BCE

• Xia Dynasty (?) 2100-1800 BCE– Erlitou

• Shang Dynasty 1500-1122 BCE– Erligang

• Zhou Dynasty 1122-256 BCE– Western Zhou– Eastern Zhou

• Spring & Autumn Period• Warring States Period

Before the Shang• 3 Sovereigns and 5 Emperors

– Credited with inventing agriculture, writing, government, flood control, silk culture, medicine

• Emperor Yu (last of 5)– Flood control– 9 sacred vessels– Founding of Xia Dynasty

• Controversies over archaeological evidence

Shang Dynasty

• Emergence (and survival) of written records – oracle bones

• Bronze technology

• Oracle Bone

“to ancestress Yi offer a fine pig, to ancestress Gui a boar, to ancestress Ding a pig, to ancestress Yi a pig.”

• Turtle plastron oracle bone

• Ox scapula oracle bone, late Shang, ca. 1200 BCE

Oracle bone pit, Anyang

Preface:] Crack making on gui-si day, Que divined:[Charge:] In the next ten days there will be no disaster.[Prognostication:] The king, reading the cracks, said, "There will be no harm; there will perhaps be the coming of alarming news."[Verification:] When it came to the fifth day, ding-you, there really was the the coming of alarming news from the west. Zhi Guo, reporting, said, "The Du Fang [a border people] are besieging in our eastern borders and have harmed two settlements." The Gong-fang also raided the fields of our western borders.

This translation follows (with slight modifications) David N. Keightley, Sources of Shang History (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1978), p. 44. The oracle bone being cited is Ching-hua 2.

• Bronze Ding, Shang, ca. 13th C

• Piece-Mold technique

• Cast a bronze vessel

Jue

Ding

Gu

3 vessel shapes predominant in Shang.All had been created in clay in earlier periods.

• Bronze Ding, Shang, ca. 13th C

• Shang bronze gui, ca. 1600-1100 BCE

• Bronze Gu (wine goblet), Shang dynasty, 13th C BCE

• Longshan Neolithic

• “Eggshell” pottery

• Closeup of tao tie on early Shang bronze

• Spouted ritual wine vessel (guang), Shang dynasty, early Anyang period (ca. 1300–1050 B.C.),

• Jue, Ritual Wine Vessel, Late Shang (12th C BCE)

• Fang I (Ritual Wine Vessel)Shang, :late 13th-12th century

• 11 3/4 x 7 1/4 in.

• Shih tripod bronze ting vesselLate Shang dynasty (1300-1046 B.C.)

Shang Dynasty Burials

• Fu Hao, died ca. 1200 BC

• A wife of Emperor Wu Ding

• A military general

• An oracle bone diviner

• Tomb discovered in 1976

• Modern Statue representing Fu Hao, at the site of her tomb. Tomb is open for tourist visits

• YinXu is site of many oracle bone pits, last capital of Shang Dynasty

• Burial Pit of Lady Fu Hao with Bronze vessels & human companions

• Bronze Ding from Fu Hao’s Tomb (about 10 inches tall), rubbing of her posthumous name, inside ding.

• Zun, or Wine Vessel, from Fu Hao’s Tomb (two images)

• Decoration of zun from Fu Hao’s tomb,

• Lidded container from Fu Hao’s tomb

• Taotie

Jade cong from Neolithic era

• Drinking vessel, Fu Hao’s tomb, Shang, ca. 1200 BCE

• Compare to Neolithic pottery vessel, ca.2000 bce

• Ivory goblet inlaid with turquoise, Late Shang Period (c. 1200 B.C.) Fu Hao’s tomb

Shang Dynasty Review

• Bronze Age: weaponry, ritual vessels

• Highly stratified, wealthy and powerful society

• The basis for modern Chinese writing

• vocab: taotie, afterlife, grave goods, ritual, divination, oracle, ancestor worship, Xia dynasty, gu, ding, jue, piece-mold casting, pictograph, thunder pattern