Page 341 - Four Thousand Years Ago by Geoffrey Bibby

The presentation to one of the ancestors of a vessel for food or

wine or water is a fitting way of commemorating any auspicious
event, a successful hunt or battle, or a mark of imperial favor
a grant of land or of title. After all, the ancestors’ influence
determines the course of events for their descendants, and they

deserve a reward for their efforts. The name of the ancestor thus
honored will often be inscribed on the vessel in the pictographic
script that, like bronze itself, has come into use during the

reign of this enlightened dynasty. For many of the nobles can
read; it is not an accomplishment confined to the oracle priests.
The priests are the interpreters between the dead and the hy­
ing. Although they accompany the emperor on his travels in order

to give him day-to-day advice from the ancestors, it is best to
pose important questions within the ancestor temple in the city,
where one is most likely to find the ancestors at home. Questions

are submitted in writing, carved on shoulder blades of cattle or
on tortoise shells, and the ancestors answer them, with a plain
“Yes” or “No,” by guiding the direction of the crack produced
when the priest applies a red-hot bronze point to the back of the

bone. It is a simple method, and the same bone or shell can be
used over and over again. So the ancestors are asked about
everything: tomorrow’s weather and the best place to camp for

the night, as well as the prospects for the harvest or the strategy
to be adopted against an invading army. The answers are not
infallible, for after all even ancestors are not all-powerful. But on
the whole they know better than their living descendants, and

sometimes the priest will triumphantly inscribe on the bone after
the event the tally of the day’s hunt or the laconic remark that

“it really didn’t rain.”

It is these inscribed bones and tortoise shells and bronze ves­
sels, together with the archaeological remains of the Great City of
Shang at the site of An-yang, which have cast a flood of light over
the civilization of north China in the latter half of the Second

Millennium b.c. But the discoveries at An-yang pose as many
questions as they solve, and one could wish that the ancestra

spirits of the Emperor P*an Keng were still disposed to give ac
curate answers to them.