Page 185 - The Golden Age of Chinese Archaeology: Celebrated Discoveries from the People’s Republic of China

55

Inscribed bovid scapula
7
Height 40.5 (i5 / 8), width 22.5 (87s)
Shang Dynasty, twelfth century BCE
From Xiaotun, Anyang, Henan Province
The Institute of Archaeology, CASS, Beijing

In December 1971 Chinese archaeologists found
a group of twenty-one complete bovid scapulas in
a test trench some 160 meters west of Xiaotun.
1
This scapula bears twenty-two preparatory hollows
on the lower front surface and over thirty hollows
on the upper back surface. 2 After the divinatory
crackings had been performed, the Shang en-
gravers recorded eight inscriptions on the front
of the bone.
One of the longest divination charges is re-
corded in seventeen characters that, starting at
the top, form the far-left column on the bone (ten
characters) and then, at the bottom of the column,
run to the right (seven more characters). It may
be tentatively translated as follows: "In performing
the lustration ritual for the Herdsmen [officers],
to Ancestress Yi offer a fine [?] pig, to Ancestress
Gui a boar, to Ancestress Ding a pig, to Ancestress
Yi a pig." Another charge (recorded as the last
eleven characters of the third column from the
right edge of the bone) was addressed, by contrast,
to the ancestors: "In performing the lustration
ritual, to Ancestor Gui offer a pig, to Ancestor Yi
a boar [?], to Ancestor Wu a pig." 3
The other six charges on the scapula involve
other offerings, mainly of various kinds of pigs
(also of a dog), and lustrations to various ancestors
and ancestresses. Curiously, the engravers erased
the heads of all the "pig" characters, a practice
(found occasionally on other bones) that must
have had some significance. 4 The "temple names"
of the ancestresses (Yi, Gui, and Ding) and ances-
tors (Gui, Yi, and Wu), were conferred upon them
posthumously. The Shang selected these names
from a list of ten counters or "stems" (a later term)
that they also used to name the ten days of their
week. The Shang were thus able to schedule their

184 | B R O N Z E ACE CHIN A