Page 138 - Deydier UNDERSTANDING CHINESE ARCHAIC BRONZES

The Tortoise or Turtle Motif 龜紋
For the Chinese people, from early antiquity up to the present moment,
the tortoise or turtle is the symbol of longevity and auspiciousness. It is
recorded that in the Xia 夏, Shang 商, Zhou 周 and even later periods,
the tortoise was considered so precious and sacred that only the King
Emperor and his Princes and Dukes were permitted to keep tortoises in
captivity and that in the Royal Temple a special chamber was reserved
for tortoises, which like the ding 鼎, were considered national treasures
as well as sacred creatures invested with god-like powers.

In ancient times and even among modern practitioners of feng shui 風
水, the tortoise was and is still considered a mystical creature endowed
with the ability to help man predict the future, to serve as a mediator
between man and the world of gods, spirits and the dead and, perhaps
most importantly, to transform harmful, inauspicious forces into
beneficial, auspicious ones, ill-luck into good fortune, enemies into
supporters.

It is not by chance then that the ancient ancestors of the Chinese,
the people of the Shang 商, made use of the tortoise’s shell as well as
other creatures’ bones, when carrying out oracle bone, jiaguwen 甲
骨文 (Tortoise Shell and Bone Writing), divinations to seek the help
of the spirits and ancestors in determining the auspiciousness or
inauspiciousness of any important planned undertaking, including
making war, forming alliances, marrying, attempting to recover
escaped slaves, commencing agricultural work, etc.

As early as the Erligang 二里崗 period (circa 17 /16 – 14 centuries
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B.C.) of the Shang 商 dynasty, the turtle, like the dragon and the fish,
was very often used as a decorative motif inside the large deep-dish-
shaped pan 盤 bronze vessels used for ritual libations, suggesting the
tortoise’s auspicious relationship with water and the netherworld.

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Turtle motif, detail of the pan, Shang dynasty, Erligang period (circa 17 /16 – circa 14 centuries
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B.C.) shown on page 73.
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