Page 72 - Sotheby's NYC September 20 2022 Forging An Empire Bronzes

This particular li is conceivably a yingqi 媵器 (dowry vessel), even though it is lacking the ying 媵
character in the inscription. Yingqi are significant in studies of China’s ancient history, as they provide
insight into the political alliances made through marriage during this period. In the Zhou dynasty, bronze
yingqi were wedding dowries reserved for females in aristocratic and royal families. These vessels would
accompany a bride to her new family to be used as ritual or functional vessels. Although the inscription
suggests that this Xuan Mu li could have been a gift from the Zhou king to one of his wives, its excavated
location reveals that this li was brought away from the new capital of the newly formed Eastern Zhou
dynasty, Luoyi (present-day Luoyang). Therefore, this vessel was possibly commissioned by the Zhou
king for his daughter who married the lord of Xu, a regional vassal state possibly located in the Qishan
area of Shaanxi province.

Compare three closely related li, all of which are yingqi from the early Spring and Autumn period. A pair
of Lu Bo Yu Fu Li 魯伯愈父鬲, excavated in the Teng county of Shandong province during the Daoguang
period, is in the Shanghai Museum, Shanghai, and illustrated in Chen Peifen, Xia Shang Zhou qingtongqi
yanjiu [Study of archaic bronzes from Shang and Zhou dynasties], Eastern Zhou, vol. 1, Shanghai, 2004,
pp 34-36, no. 446; the third, the Zhu You Fu Li 鼄友父鬲, formerly in the collection of Xia Zhisheng (mid-
Qing dynasty), now in the collection of the Palace Museum, Beijing, is illustrated in Yan Yiping, Jinwen
zongji [Corpus of bronze inscriptions], Taipei, 1983, no. 1498.