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75-451: At the time of the Shang dynasty during the 2nd millennium BCE, the tripod cauldrons came to symbolize the power and authority of the ruling dynasty with strict regulations imposed as to their use. Members of the scholarly gentry class were permitted to use one or three cauldrons; the ministers of state ( 大夫 , dàfū ) five; the vassal lords seven; and only the sovereign Son of Heaven

150-510: A Chenggu -style dagger-axe at Xiaohenan demonstrates that even at this early stage of Chinese history, there were some ties between the distant areas of north China. The Panlongcheng site in the middle Yangtze valley was an important regional centre of the Erligang culture. Accidental finds elsewhere in China have revealed advanced civilisations contemporaneous with but culturally unlike

225-725: A black bird and subsequently gave birth miraculously to Xie . Xie is said to have helped Yu the Great to control the Great Flood and for his service to have been granted a place called Shang as a fief. The period before the Shang dynasty was established is known as the " Predynastic Shang " (or "Proto-Shang"). In the Annals of the Yin , Sima Qian writes that the dynasty was founded 13 generations after Xie, when Xie's descendant Tang overthrew

300-502: A date first established by Sima Qian . Attempts to establish earlier dates have been plagued by doubts about the origin and transmission of traditional texts and the difficulties in their interpretation. More recent attempts have compared the traditional histories with archaeological and astronomical data. At least 44 dates for the end of the dynasty have been proposed, ranging from 1130 to 1018 BC. The oldest extant direct records date from c.  1250 BC at Anyang, covering

375-431: A few hundred humans and horses as well to accompany the king into the afterlife, in some cases even numbering four hundred. Finally, tombs included ornaments such as jade, which the Shang may have believed to protect against decay or confer immortality. The Shang religion was highly bureaucratic and meticulously ordered. Oracle bones contained descriptions of the date, ritual, person, ancestor, and questions associated with

450-479: A force of about a thousand troops at his capital and would personally lead this force into battle. A rudimentary military bureaucracy was also needed in order to muster forces ranging from three to five thousand troops for border campaigns to thirteen thousand troops for suppressing rebellions. The earliest records are the oracle bones inscribed during the reigns of the Shang kings from Wu Ding . Oracle bone inscriptions do not contain king lists, but they do record

525-462: A height of 8 m (26 ft), and formed a roughly rectangular wall 7 km (4 mi) around the ancient city. The rammed earth construction of these walls was an inherited tradition, since much older fortifications of this type have been found at Chinese Neolithic sites of the Longshan culture ( c.  3000  – c.  2000 BC }. In 2022, excavation of an elite tomb inside

600-405: A king of Wei had a lover named Lord Longyang, with whom he enjoyed fishing. One day, Longyang began to weep. When questioned, Longyang said he saw his own future in how he had treated a fish. Happy to have the catch at first, Longyang had wanted to throw it back when he caught a better fish. He wept, "I am also a previously-caught fish! I will also be thrown back!" To show his fidelity to Longyang,

675-473: A large labour force that could handle the mining, refining, and transportation of the necessary copper, tin, and lead ores. This in turn created a need for official managers that could oversee both labourers and skilled artisans and craftsmen. The Shang royal court and aristocrats required a vast number of different bronze vessels for various ceremonial purposes and events of religious divination. Ceremonial rules even decreed how many bronze containers of each type

750-526: A noble of a certain rank could own. With the increased amount of bronze available, the army could also better equip itself with an assortment of bronze weaponry. Bronze was also used for the fittings of spoke-wheeled chariots , which appeared in China around 1200 BC. The Shang dynasty entered into prolonged conflicts with northern frontier tribes called the Guifang . Bronze weapons were an integral part of Shang society. Shang infantry were armed with

825-470: A quintessential part of the late Shang ritual complex. Chinese historians were accustomed to the notion of one dynasty succeeding another, and readily identified the Erligang and Erlitou sites with the early Shang and Xia dynasty of traditional histories. The actual political situation in early China may have been more complicated, with the Xia and Shang being political entities that existed concurrently, just as

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900-614: A small army. According to these legends, he founded a state known as Gija Joseon in northwest Korea during the Gojoseon period of ancient Korean history. However, scholars debate the historical accuracy of these legends. Before the 20th century, the Zhou dynasty (1046–256 BC) was the earliest that could be verified from its own records. However, during the Song dynasty (960–1279), antiquarians collected bronze ritual vessels attributed to

975-565: A thousand men to search for the cauldrons to no avail. The Records of the Grand Historian recount that once Yu the Great had finished taming the floods that once engulfed the land, he divided the territory into the Nine Provinces and collected bronze in tribute from each one. Thereafter he cast the metal into nine large tripod cauldrons. Legend says that each ding weighed around 30,000 catties equivalent to 7.5 tons. However,

1050-533: A variety of stone and bronze weaponry, including spears, pole-axes, pole-based dagger-axes, composite bows, and bronze or leather helmets. Although the Shang depended upon the military skills of their nobility, Shang rulers could mobilise the masses of town-dwelling and rural commoners as conscript labourers and soldiers for both campaigns of defence and conquest. Aristocrats and other state rulers were obligated to furnish their local garrisons with all necessary equipment, armour, and armaments. The Shang king maintained

1125-522: Is not recorded, never existed. It seems that Sima Qian assigned the second part of the reign of King Hui (starting in 334BCE, on which date Marquess Hui probably proclaimed himself King) to his son King Xiang and added King Ai to fill in the gap between 319 and 296BCE. On the other hand, a minority of scholars believe King Ai did indeed exist. According to the Records of the Warring States ,

1200-410: Is unknown what criteria the diviners used to determine the response, but it is believed to be the sound or pattern of the cracks on the bone. The Shang also seem to have believed in an afterlife, as evidenced by the elaborate burial tombs built for deceased rulers. Often "carriages, utensils, sacrificial vessels, [and] weapons" would be included in the tomb. A king's burial involved the burial of up to

1275-532: The Bamboo Annals , a text whose history is complex: while originally interred in 296 BC, the authenticity of the manuscripts that have survived is controversial. Throughout history, the Shang have also been referred to as "Yin" ( 殷 ). The Shiji and the Bamboo Annals each use this name for both the dynasty, as well as its final capital. Since Huangfu Mi 's Records of Emperors and Kings in

1350-591: The Zuo Zhuan or Commentary of Zuo , states that the nine tripod cauldrons were cast by Yu the Great's son, Qi of Xia , the second Xia king, and it was he who received the tributes of bronze from the Nine Provinces. The Xia Shu ( 夏書 ) section of the Book of Documents contains the Yu Gong or "Tribute of Yu" that describes the rivers and mountains of the Nine Provinces. After Tang of Shang overthrew Jie of Xia ,

1425-499: The Zuo Zhuan . From the sources available to him, the Han dynasty historian Sima Qian assembled a chronological account of the Shang as part of the Shiji ( c.  91 BC ) official history. Sima describes some Shang-era events in detail, while others are only mentioned as taking place during the reign of a particular king. A slightly different account of the Shang is given in

1500-608: The National Museum of China in Beijing cast Nine Tripod Cauldrons which are now on permanent display as a tourist attraction. Baopuzi mentions "Records on the Nine Cauldrons" (Jiu ding ji 九鼎記 ), an alleged description of the vessels commenting on their protective function. In all Chinese speaking societies, if someone commented on someone's words as having the weight of nine tripod cauldrons ( 一言九鼎 ), this

1575-620: The Xia dynasty and followed by the Western Zhou dynasty. The classic account of the Shang comes from texts such as the Book of Documents , Bamboo Annals and Shiji . Modern scholarship dates the dynasty between the 16th and 11th centuries BC, with more agreement surrounding the end date than beginning date. The Shang dynasty is the earliest dynasty of traditional Chinese history firmly supported by archaeological evidence. Excavation at

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1650-548: The Yellow River and adoption of Legalist reforms proposed by Li Kui ( Chinese : 李悝 , c. 459 – c. 395 BCE). Hui felt that Qin in the west was weak and their land a barren waste. He focused on conquering the well-settled eastern lands which were richer in known resources, but a series of battles including the battle of Maling in 341 BCE checked Wei's ambitions while Qin's expansion went largely unimpeded, boosting its economy and military strength. Wei eventually lost

1725-535: The 3rd century AD, "Yin" has been frequently used to refer specifically to the latter half of the Shang. It is also the name predominantly used for the dynasty in Japan, Korea, and Vietnam, being rendered as In , Eun and Ân in Japanese, Korean, and Vietnamese respectively. The name seems to have originated during the subsequent Zhou dynasty ; it does not appear in oracle bone inscriptions—which refer to

1800-582: The Duke of Song , with its capital at Shangqiu . This practice was known as 'enfeoffment of three generations for two kings'. The dukes of Song would maintain rites honouring the Shang kings until Qi conquered Song in 286 BC. Confucius was possibly a descendant of the Shang Kings through the Dukes of Song. The Eastern Han dynasty bestowed the title of Duke of Song and 'Duke Who Continues and Honours

1875-414: The Grand Historian . According to the Records of the Grand Historian , the Shang moved their capital five times, with the final move to Yin in the reign of Pan Geng inaugurating the golden age of the dynasty. Di Xin, the last Shang king, is said to have committed suicide after his army was defeated by Wu of Zhou . Legends say that his army and his equipped slaves betrayed him by joining the Zhou rebels in

1950-491: The Shang King in exchange for military aid and augury services. However these alliances were unstable, as indicated by the frequent royal divinations about the sustainability of such relations. The existence of records regarding enemy kills, prisoners and booty taken point to the existence of a proto-bureaucracy of written documents. Shang religious rituals featured divination and sacrifice. The degree to which shamanism

2025-572: The Shang era, some of which bore inscriptions. In 1899, several scholars noticed that Chinese pharmacists were selling "dragon bones" marked with curious and archaic characters. These were finally traced back in 1928 to what is now called Yinxu , north of the Yellow River near Anyang , where the Academia Sinica undertook archaeological excavation until the Second Sino-Japanese War in 1937. Archaeologists focused on

2100-592: The Shang joined the Rebellion of the Three Guards against the Duke of Zhou , but the rebellion collapsed after three years, leaving Zhou in control of Shang territory. After the collapse of the Shang dynasty, Zhou's rulers forcibly relocated "Yin diehards" and scattered them throughout Zhou territory. Some surviving members of the Shang royal family collectively changed their surname from the ancestral name Zi to

2175-414: The Shang kings were viewed as the best qualified members of society to offer sacrifices to their royal ancestors and to the high god Di, who in their beliefs was responsible for the rain, wind, and thunder. The King appointed officials to manage certain activities, usually in a specified region. These included agricultural official, pastors, dog officers, and guards. These officers led their own retinues in

2250-815: The Si River but with no success. Later emperors time and again recast the cauldrons, the most well known examples being Wu Zetian in the fourth month of 697 CE and the two recastings by Song dynasty Huizong Emperor in 1105 CE. Cauldrons were also cast by other dynasties in the Sinosphere , such as the Nguyễn dynasty . The Nine Cauldrons of the Nguyễn dynasty are placed in front of the Ancestral Temple ( Thế Miếu ) in Hue Imperial Palace . In 2006,

2325-527: The Yellow River valley in Henan as the most likely site of the states described in the traditional histories. After 1950, the remnants of the earlier walled settlement of Zhengzhou Shang City were discovered within the modern city of Zhengzhou . It has been determined that the earth walls at Zhengzhou, erected in the 15th century BC, would have been 20 m (66 ft) wide at the base, rising to

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2400-459: The Yin' upon Kong An, because he was part of the legacy of the Shang. This branch of the Confucius family is a separate branch from the line that held the title of Marquis of Fengsheng village and later Duke Yansheng. Another remnant of the Shang established the vassal state of Guzhu (present-day Tangshan ), which Duke Huan of Qi destroyed. Many Shang clans that migrated northeast after

2475-399: The afterlife. Perhaps for the same reason, hundreds of commoners, who may have been slaves, were buried alive with the royal corpse. A line of hereditary Shang kings ruled over much of northern China, and Shang troops fought frequent wars with neighbouring settlements and nomadic herdsmen from the inner Asian steppes. The Shang king, in his oracular divinations, repeatedly showed concern about

2550-489: The barbarians living outside of the civilised regions, which made up the centre of Shang territory. In particular, the group living in the Yan Mountains were regularly mentioned as hostile to the Shang. Apart from their role as the head military commanders, Shang kings also asserted their social supremacy by acting as the high priests of society and leading the divination ceremonies. As the oracle bone texts reveal,

2625-464: The capital in a flood. According to Sima Qian 's Records of the Grand Historian written in the first centuryBCE, the list of rulers is slightly different: King Hui died in 335BCE and was succeeded by his son King Xiang in 334BCE. King Xiang died in 319BCE and was succeeded by his son King Ai ( 哀王 ), who died in 296BCE and was succeeded by his son King Zhao. However, the majority of scholars and commentators believe that King Ai, whose personal name

2700-536: The cauldrons. After the overthrow of Zhou and the foundation of the new Qin dynasty , the Nine Tripod Cauldrons disappeared. Theories as to their fate abound with no clear agreement amongst scholars. Amongst these theories are claims that the cauldrons were: According to historical records, both Qin Shi Huang and Emperor Wen of Han (r. 180–157 BCE) searched for the nine tripod cauldrons in

2775-610: The city walls yielded over 200 artefacts, including a gold face covering measuring 18.3 by 14.5 cm (7.2 by 5.7 in). In 1959, the site of the Erlitou culture was found in Yanshi, south of the Yellow River near Luoyang . Radiocarbon dating suggests that the Erlitou culture flourished c.  2100 BC to 1800 BC. They built large palaces, suggesting the existence of an organised state. In 1983, Yanshi Shang City

2850-425: The conduct of their duties, and some grew more independent and emerged as rulers of their own. There was a basic system of bureaucracy in place, with references to positions such as the "Many Dog officers", "Many horse officers", the "Many Artisans", the "Many Archers" or court titles like "Junior Servitor for Cultivation" or "Junior Servitor for labourers". Members of the royal family would be assigned personal estates;

2925-641: The decisive Battle of Muye . According to the Yi Zhou Shu and Mencius the battle was very bloody. The classic Ming dynasty novel Investiture of the Gods retells the story of the war between Shang and Zhou as a conflict with rival factions of gods supporting different sides in the war. After the Shang were defeated, King Wu allowed Di Xin's son Wu Geng to rule the Shang as a vassal kingdom. However, Zhou Wu sent three of his brothers and an army to ensure that Wu Geng would not rebel. After Zhou Wu's death,

3000-454: The divination. Tombs displayed highly ordered arrangements of bones, with groups of skeletons laid out facing the same direction. Chinese bronze casting and pottery advanced during the Shang, with bronze typically being used for ritually significant, rather than primarily utilitarian, items. As early as c.  1500 BC , the early Shang dynasty engaged in large-scale production of bronzeware vessels and weapons. This production required

3075-558: The dominant house of Zhi ( 知 ) in 453 BCE, resulting in the partition of Jin . King Weilie of Zhou finally legitimized the situation in 403 BCE, when he elevated the three houses' heads to the rank of marquess ( Chinese : 侯 ; pinyin : hóu ). The state reached its apogee during the reigns of its first two rulers, Marquess Wen of Wei and Marquess Wu of Wei . The third ruler, King Hui of Wei (reign 369–319 BC), declared himself an independent sovereign and concentrated on economic developments, including irrigation projects at

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3150-479: The dynasty's collapse were integrated into Yan culture during the Western Zhou period. These clans maintained an elite status and continued practising the sacrificial and burial traditions of the Shang. Both Korean and Chinese legends, including reports in the Book of Documents and Bamboo Annals , state that a disgruntled Shang prince named Jizi , who had refused to cede power to the Zhou, left China with

3225-586: The earliest layers of the Wucheng culture predating Anyang have yielded pottery fragments containing short sequences of symbols, suggesting that they may be a form of writing quite different in form from oracle bone characters, but the sample is too small for decipherment. The earliest securely dated event in Chinese history is the start of the Gonghe Regency in 841 BC, early in the Zhou dynasty,

3300-599: The early Zhou , who established the successor state of the Shang, are known to have existed at the same time as the Shang. It has also been suggested the Xia legend originated as a Shang myth of an earlier people who were their opposites. The Erligang culture centred on the Zhengzhou site is found across a wide area of China, even as far northeast as the area of modern Beijing, where at least one burial in this region during this period contained both Erligang-style bronze utensils and local-style gold jewellery. The discovery of

3375-518: The eastern capital of Luoyi (later Luoyang), he moved the cauldrons there, at the same time asking King Cheng to carry out their ritual installation in the settlement's Ancestral Hall ( 太廟 ). The power of the Zhou royal family began to decline at the start of the Eastern Zhou Period in 771 BCE, with each vassal state clamoring for kingship. At the time of King Ding of Zhou (r. 605–586 BCE), King Zhuang of Chu inquired for

3450-427: The first time regarding the "weight of the cauldrons" ( 問鼎之輕重 ) only to be rebuffed by the Zhou minister Prince Man ( 王孫滿 ). Asking such a question was at that time a direct challenge to the power of the reigning dynasty. King Ling of Chu (r. 540–529 BCE) later again inquired of the cauldrons but was unsuccessful due to unrest sweeping the country During the reign of King Huiwen of Qin (r. 338–311 BCE),

3525-578: The house of Wei. Jin's political structure was drastically changed after the slaughter of its ruling dynasty during and after the Li Ji Unrest . Afterwards, "Jin ha[d] no princely house" ( 晉無公卿 ) and its political power diffused into extended relations of the ruling family, including the Wei. In the last years of the Spring and Autumn period , the founders of Wei, Zhao , and Han joined to attack and kill

3600-546: The impious and cruel final Xia ruler in the Battle of Mingtiao . The Records of the Grand Historian recount events from the reigns of Tang, Tai Jia , Tai Wu , Pan Geng , Wu Ding , Wu Yi and the depraved final king Di Xin , but the rest of the Shang rulers are merely mentioned by name. In the last century, Wang Guowei demonstrated that the succession to the Shang throne matched the list of kings in Sima Qian's Records of

3675-523: The initial scientific excavations during the 1920s and 1930s, and over four times as many have been found since. The inscriptions provide critical insight into many topics from the politics, economy, and religious practices to the art and medicine of the early stages of Chinese history. Several of the Chinese classics discuss the history of the Shang, including the Book of Documents , the Mencius and

3750-451: The invention of many musical instruments and celestial observations of Mars and various comets by Shang astronomers. Their civilisation was based on agriculture and augmented by hunting and animal husbandry. In addition to war, the Shang practised human sacrifice . The majority of human sacrifice victims mentioned in Shang writings were war captives taken from the Qiang people, who lived to

3825-417: The king provided them with pre-determined public works such as walling cities in their regions, distributed materials and issued commands to them. In turn, their estates belonged ultimately to the king's land, and they paid tribute to the king as well as reporting to him about conquered lands. More distant rulers were known by titles translated as marquess or count, who sometimes provided tribute and support to

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3900-508: The last Shang capital Yinxu , near modern-day Anyang , uncovered eleven major royal tombs and the foundations of palaces and ritual sites, containing weapons of war and remains from both animal and human sacrifices. Tens of thousands of bronze, jade , stone, bone, and ceramic artifacts have been found. The Anyang site has yielded the earliest known body of Chinese writing , mostly divinations inscribed on oracle bones —usually turtle shells or ox scapulae . More than 20,000 were discovered in

3975-563: The main palatial complex, there were underground pits used for storage, servants' quarters, and housing quarters. Many Shang royal tombs had been tunnelled into and ravaged by grave robbers in ancient times, but in the spring of 1976, the discovery of Tomb 5 at Yinxu revealed a tomb that was not only undisturbed, but one of the most richly furnished Shang tombs that archaeologists had yet come across. With over 200 bronze ritual vessels and 109 inscriptions of Fu Hao 's name, Zheng Zhenxiang and other archaeologists realised they had stumbled across

4050-468: The name of their fallen dynasty, Yin. The family retained an aristocratic standing and often provided needed administrative services to the succeeding Zhou dynasty. King Wu of Zhou ennobled Lin Jian ( 林堅 ), the son of Prince Bigan , as the Duke of Bo'ling. The Shiji states that King Cheng of Zhou , with the support of his regent and uncle, the Duke of Zhou , enfeoffed Weiziqi ( 微子啟 ), a brother of Di Xin, as

4125-409: The nine tripod cauldrons were moved to the Shang capital at Yan . Later, when the Shang king Pan Geng moved his capital to Yin ( 殷 ), the cauldrons again went with him. Following the overthrow of the Shang dynasty by the Zhou dynasty, the new King Wu of Zhou put the nine tripod cauldrons on public display for the first time. When King Cheng of Zhou ascended the throne, the Duke of Zhou built

4200-555: The nine tripod cauldrons were taken from the Zhou royal palace and moved westward to the Qin capital at Xianyang . However, by the time Qin Shi Huang had eliminated the other six Warring States to become the first emperor of China in 221 BCE, the whereabouts of the nine tripod cauldrons were unknown. Sima Qian records in his Records of the Grand Historian that they were lost in the Si River to where Qin Shi Huang later dispatched

4275-474: The northwest of the Shang. Using skeletal isotope analysis, a group of Shang sacrifice victims at the Zhengzhou site was also found to most likely have been war captives. Skulls of sacrificial victims have been found to be similar to modern Chinese ones (based on comparisons with remains from Hainan and Taiwan ). Cowry shells were also excavated at Anyang, suggesting trade with coast-dwellers, but there

4350-500: The oracle bones by posthumous names . The last character of each name is one of the 10 celestial stems , which also denoted the day of the 10-day Shang week on which sacrifices would be offered to that ancestor within the ritual schedule. There were more kings than stems, so the names have distinguishing prefixes such as da ('greater', 大 ), zhong ('middle', 中 ), xiao ('lesser', 小 ), bu ('outer', 卜 ), and zu ('ancestor', 祖 ), as well as other, more obscure ones. The kings, in

4425-517: The order of succession derived from the oracle bones, are here grouped by generation. Later reigns were assigned to oracle bone diviner groups by Dong Zuobin . Wei (state) Wei ( / w eɪ / ; Chinese : 魏 ; pinyin : Wèi ) was one of the seven major states during the Warring States period of ancient China. It was created from the three-way Partition of Jin , together with Han and Zhao . Its territory lay between

4500-421: The reigns of the last nine Shang kings. The Shang had a fully developed system of writing, preserved on bronze inscriptions and a small number of other writings on pottery, jade and other stones, horn, etc., but most prolifically on oracle bones. The complexity and sophistication of this writing system indicates an earlier period of development, but direct evidence of such is still lacking. Other advances included

4575-417: The ruling house of Wei to the Zhou royalty: Gao, Duke of Bi ( 畢公高 ), was a son of King Wen of Zhou . His descendants took their surname , Bi , from his fief . After the destruction of Bi, Bi Wan ( 畢萬 ) escaped to Jin , where he became a courtier of Duke Xian 's, accompanying his personal carriage. After a successful military expedition, Bi Wan was granted Wei, from which his own descendants then founded

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4650-433: The sacrifices to previous kings and the ancestors of the current king, which follow a standard schedule that scholars have reconstructed. From this evidence, scholars have assembled the implied king list and genealogy, finding that it is in substantial agreement with the later accounts, especially for later kings. According to this implied king list, Wu Ding was the twenty-first Shang king. The Shang kings were referred to in

4725-513: The settlement at Anyang, such as the walled city of Sanxingdui in Sichuan . Western scholars are hesitant to designate such settlements as belonging to the Shang. Also unlike the Shang, there is no known evidence that the Sanxingdui culture had a system of writing. The late Shang state at Anyang is thus generally considered the first verifiable civilisation in Chinese history. In contrast,

4800-445: The state as "Shang" ( 商 ), and to its capital as "Great Settlement of Shang" ( 大邑商 ; Dàyì Shāng ) —nor does it appear in any bronze inscriptions securely dated to the Western Zhou ( c.  1046  – 771 BC). The founding myth of the Shang is described by Sima Qian in the Annals of the Yin . In the text, a woman named Jiandi , who was the second wife of Emperor Ku , swallowed an egg dropped by

4875-495: The states of Qin and Qi and included parts of modern-day Henan , Hebei , Shanxi , and Shandong . After its capital was moved from Anyi to Daliang (present-day Kaifeng ) during the reign of King Hui , Wei was also called Liang ( Chinese : 梁 ; pinyin : Liáng ). Not to be confused with the Wey state 衞, which is still sometimes only differentiated by its Chinese character in scholarship. Surviving sources trace

4950-523: The strategist Zhang Yi formulated a plan by which he hoped to seize the Nine Tripod Cauldrons and thus gain command of the other Zhou vassal states. King Qingxiang of Chu , along with the king of the State of Qi also sought possession of the treasures as did the states of Wei and Han . The last Eastern Zhou monarch King Nan of Zhou (r. 314–256 BCE) dealt with all these rival claimants by playing them off against one another and thus kept possession of

5025-469: The tomb of Fu Hao, Wu Ding's most famous consort also renowned as a military general, and mentioned in 170 to 180 oracle bone inscriptions. Along with bronze vessels, stoneware and pottery vessels, bronze weapons, jade figures and hair combs, and bone hairpins were found. The archaeological team argue that the large assortment of weapons and ritual vessels in her tomb correlate with the oracle bone accounts of her military and ritual activities. The capital

5100-400: The western Hexi (河西) region, a strategic area of pastoral land on the west bank of the Yellow River between the border of modern-day Shanxi and Shaanxi , to Qin. Thereafter, it remained continuously at war with Qin, requiring the capital to be moved from Anyi to Daliang . Wei surrendered to Qin in 225 BCE, after the Qin general Wang Ben diverted the Yellow River into Daliang, destroying

5175-411: Was a central aspect of Shang religion is a subject of debate. There were six main recipients of sacrifice: The Shang believed that their ancestors held power over them and performed divination rituals to secure their approval for planned actions. Divination involved cracking a turtle carapace or ox scapula to answer a question, and to then record the response to that question on the bone itself. It

5250-461: Was a great compliment to the person. It meant that the person was very trustworthy and would never break their promises. Shang dynasty The Shang dynasty ( Chinese : 商朝 ; pinyin : Shāng cháo ), also known as the Yin dynasty ( 殷代 ; Yīn dài ), was a Chinese royal dynasty that ruled in the Yellow River valley during the second millennium BC, traditionally succeeding

5325-557: Was apparently occupied for less than a century and destroyed shortly before the construction of the Yinxu complex. Between 1989 and 2000, an important Shang settlement was excavated near Xiaoshuangqiao , about 20 km (12 mi) northwest of Zhengzhou. Covering an intermediary period between the Zhengzhou site and the late capitals on the Huan River , it features most prominently sacrificial pits with articulated skeletons of cattle,

5400-508: Was discovered 6 km (3.7 mi) north-east of the Erlitou site in Yanshi's Shixianggou Township. This was a large walled city dating from 1600 BC. It had an area of nearly 200 ha (490 acres) and featured pottery characteristic of the Erligang culture . The remains of a walled city of about 470 ha (1,200 acres) were discovered in 1999 across the Huan River from the well explored Yinxu site. The city, now known as Huanbei ,

5475-509: Was entitled to use nine. The use of the nine tripod cauldrons to offer ritual sacrifices to the ancestors from heaven and earth was a major ceremonial occasion so that by natural progression the ding came to symbolize national political power and later to be regarded as a National Treasure . Sources state that two years after the fall of the Zhou dynasty at the hands of what would become the Qin dynasty

5550-422: Was the centre of court life. Over time, court rituals to appease spirits developed, and in addition to his secular duties, the king would serve as the head of the ancestor worship cult. Often, the king would even perform oracle bone divinations himself, especially near the end of the dynasty. Evidence from excavations of the royal tombs indicates that royalty were buried with articles of value, presumably for use in

5625-823: Was very limited sea trade since China was isolated from other large civilisations during the Shang period. Trade relations and diplomatic ties with other formidable powers via the Silk Road and Chinese voyages to the Indian Ocean did not exist until the reign of Emperor Wu during the Han dynasty (202 BC – 221 AD). At the excavated royal palace in Yinxu, large stone pillar bases were found along with rammed earth foundations and platforms, which according to Fairbank, were "as hard as cement". These foundations in turn originally supported 53 buildings of wooden post-and-beam construction. In close proximity to

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