Week II: Part 1
ANCIENT CIVILIZATIONS: CHINA, THE CENTRAL KINGDOM
The City of Anyang
Bronze Fang Ding from Anyang
READING: La Plante, Asian Art, pp. 84-99.
Historic Period: The Three Dynasties
Xia (also spelled Hsia) Dynasty (c.2206-1766 B.C.)
Shang Dynasty (c.1766-c.1122 or c.1750-c.1050 B.C.)
Anyang, "The Waste of Yin", Henan Province - the last capital of the Shang Dynasty
Guanghan, Sichuan Province (c.1100/1000 B.C.) - site from the early Shu culture
Zhou (also spelled Chou) Dynasty (c.1122/1050-221 B.C.)
Tomb of Lady Hao at Anyang
TIME LINE: (c. 1300-1000 B.C.)
taotie- mask on ritual objects
kui - dragon
zong - earth symbol
bi - heaven symbol
vessel shapes: gu (ku), jue (chueh), ding (ting), fang ding, gui
oracle bones - for divination
reverence for ancestors
Mohenjo-daro in decline
Saul became first king of Israel
Moses received the "Ten Commandments"
NOTES: Ask yourself how art produced by the aristocracy in ancient China relates to political practice and spiritual
beliefs about nature and family.
Chang, K.C., Shang Civilization, New Haven, l980.
NOTES on Orthodox History:
When human beings became aware of themselves as a cultural community, they formulated ideas of the past, to explain how
they became what they were. What relation have their ideas of the past to the ideas of modern outsiders? The following
notions are important in the stories of antiquity and recount some of the most cherished values of Chinese civilization:
1. The epic of the taming of the North China wilderness;
The sage-kings of the legends are nothing less than symbols of the most typical acrtivities and cherished values of Chinese
aristocratic civilization. Why they became typical and why they became cherished are questions that moderns ask.
2. The establishment of the sedentary agricultural llife as the characteristic setting of traditional Chinese
3. The control and supply of water as an established major concern of sophisticated government, and hostility between the
desert and the sown as a fixed motif of Chinese civilization;
4. The rise of literary virtues to preeminence and the socially remarkable disposition to take "virtue", not birth, as
giving rise to political authority.
Adapted from: Levenson, J. R., and F. Schurmann, China: An Interpretive History, Berkeley, 1975, pp. 5-7.
THE TOMB OF LADY HAO AT ANYANG (c. 1200 B.C.)
The fang ding pictured here is a bronze ritual vessel excavated from the tomb of Lady Hao in 1976 at Anyang,
Henan Province, in north China. It was a tomb of modest scale by comparison to the great royal tombs opened there in the
late 1920's and 1930's. Its undisturbed chamber yielded a tremendous amount of magnificent tomb furniture, however, making
it the bestpreserved of any tomb ever excavated at Anyang, the last capital of the Shang Dynasty (c. 1300-1050 BCE).
The pit is an oblong shaft with a measurement of 5.6 by 4 meters. Along both the eastern and western walls at a depth
of about 6.2 meters was an elongated niche with several sacrifices: sixteen humans beings and six dogs. Tomb furniture was
placed in eight layers both above and on the chamber top, in the chamber between its walls and the coffin, and inside the coffin
itself. Altogether there were 1900 pieces of which about 460 were sacral bronze vessels, tools and weapons, almost 750 were
jade, and about 560 were bone objects, plus some sculptures and ivory carvings. In addition, there were five pottery
vessels and nearly 6,900 cowrie shells, presumably used as currency. The immense wealth of this tomb and others at Anyang
indicates that the Shang had control of and created great resources.
The Shang elite are considered the rulers of the first archaeologically identifiable state (dynasty) in East Asia--in
the central Yellow river Basin in north China. Knowledge about these people can be gleaned from the inscriptions found on
some of the bronze vessels, from writing on animal bones or turtle shells which were used for taking oracles (the questions and
answers asked of the ancestors and other spirits inscribed on the surface of the bones), and from the archaeological record.
Examples of all these documents were found at Anyang, occupied by the Shang kings from about 1350-1050 BCE.
The bronzes uncovered in the Tomb of Lady Hao constitute the largest and most complete, intact group of their kind ever
discovered at Anyang. Over 190 bear inscriptions which refer to "Lady Hao" and suggest her status and death date. She was
a well-known consort of King Wu Ding (c. 1200 BCE) and a general when she died somewhat before the King. The consistency of
materials found in her tomb and other materials excavated at the site confirm her acceptance into the Shang elite--she used
the clan emblem, the taotie--and yet probably retained cultural affiliation with her non-Shang parent culture as marked by the
jade hawk, frontier-style bronze knives, horse gear and mirrors found in the tomb in association with her personal effects.
Anyang was a ceremonial center which included the royal burial grounds as well as official temples and palaces built on
pounded earth platforms. The Shang faith was shamanism which required offerings of food and entertainment to the ancestors;
to deceased great men, and to deities of rain, water, rivers, wind and stars who lived in the cosmos and could be appealed
to, but also had to be appeased. The wu--seers, medicine men, and/or sorcerers--and their associates--the diviners
who predicted the future--were mediums between the supernatural and human worlds. These ritual leaders could write and keep
accounts as well as served as archivists and historians.
Rituals and burial at Anyang paid homage to ancestors and to spirits of the natural world, and the materials used at
these ceremonies were specially decorated with the two-eyed mask called a tao-tie, probably the emblem of the ruling clan.
Presumably by claiming that communication with the spirit world including ancestors was possible only through use of
precious sumptuary bronzes, the elite were able to create and maintain their status separate from the masses. Because they
controlled the production of bronze as well as the ceremonies which made use of bronze vessels and weapons, they demonstrated
their dual power--access to the spirit world and military domination.
Archaeological finds at Anyang reveal ceremonial functions rather than administrative ones such as witnessed at other
ancient centers such as those in the Tigris-Euphrates Valley and at Mohenjo-daro. Not only were royalty and their retinue
buried there, the artifacts necessary to legitimate ritual were produced there. Bronze foundries, bone, stone and ivory
workshops were excavated in the center.
CHINESE BRONZE CASTING
The industries used to make the sacral vessels and implements of ritual were located in Anyang itself. Bronze
production was a highly sophisticated activity requiring a large team of specialists coordinated by some central authority:
miners; persons to refine the copper, tin and lead ores for the alloy; designers; metallurgists who advised on the percentages
of metals desirable to produce the complicated shapes with intricate designs on their surfaces. The process used was a
sophisticated piece-mould method of casting which depended on very intimate knowledge of the properties of different clays.
The designer produced an exact model of the desired final product in fine clay, complete with the incised designs on the
surface. Heavy clay was packed around a core forming a mould. Space between the two was created by pinning the model and
mould apart. That entire assemblage was packed in sand, heated and the molten bronze was poured into the opening to form
the sacred vessel. After cooling, relief designs details on the surface of the bronze were filed and polished to produce a
clean-lined design and shiny surface.
From: K. Linduff,"Ancient China," in Art Past / Art Present , by D.
Wilkins, B. Schultz, and K. Linduff, New York, 4th ed., 2000.