---Hou-chia-chuang Tomb No.1001---
The last phase of
the Shang dynasty began about 3,300 years ago, when the
Shang ruler P'an Keng moved his capital to a site at what is
now Hsiao-t'un village in Anyang county, Honan province.
Twelve kings ruled there during the following 273 years, and
the culture of the Shang people flourished. When these kings
died, they were usually buried under large grave-mounds
north of the Hsiao-t'un site, across the Huan River in an
area called His-pei-kang in the township of Hou-chia-chuang.
From the fall of 1934 to the spring of 1935, archaeological
teams from the Academia Sinica Institute of History and
Philology carried out extensive excavations at one of these
tombs (No. 1001), which produced some of the most important
finds in modern Chinese archaeology.
When finally
excavated, the tomb was a large southward-facing
cross-shaped pit. The legs of the cross were ramps leading
down into the earth, the north-south leg was about 69 meters
long and seven meters wide, while the east-west leg was
about 46 meters long. The actual burial chamber was at the
intersection of the ramps, in the lowest part of the pit,
and was shaped like the Chinese character ya. This area was
10.5 meters below ground level and contained traces of a
wooden structure, also ya shaped; the structure was 9.7
meters from north to south (with an entrance at the south
end) and 11.2 meters from east to west. It was three meters
high, so that the roof would still have been 7.4 meters from
underground when the pet was filled in. This structure
originally contained the sarcophagus of the Shang king
(thought to be one of the earlier rulers of the late Shang
period) along with the funerary goods that were customarily
buried with late-Shang rulers. Unfortunately, grave-robbers
began to rifle the tomb at an undetermined date, and most of
the more valuable treasure was removed; even the king's
bones were scattered. Thus when the Academia Sinica
archaeologists uncovered the tomb, they found only a small
portion of the original contents.
Although the
funerary items excavated from this tomb were relatively few
in number, they nevertheless constituted a considerable
find, including stone and bone carvings, white-clay pottery,
jades and bronze vessels. The free-standing stone carvings
are lively and realistic depictions of animals, and the
stone tigers and owls among them have since become
especially famous. Other important finds included a carved
bone hsun or ocarina, one of the earlier know examples of a
Chinese wind instrument, and two ladle like ssu utensils,
also of carved bone, whose colorful painted decors indicate
that the traditional Chinese hair writing-brush was being
used for painting during the late Shang period. The
white-clay pottery found in this tomb represented a new
stage in the cultural development that had begun with the
previously-known painted and black-clay potteries of the
Late Neolithic period; its decorations were knife-carved, a
clear departure from the painted pottery. Moreover, the
finely-carved decorative motifs on the bone objects show
that the Shang people possessed the tools and techniques for
working such hard materials. These motifs are in the same
style as those on the pottery and bronzes of the time, and
brilliantly display the Shang artisans' genius for capturing
living movement in simplified, expressive patterns that are
the precursors of traditional Chinese decorative design.
Besides the
strikingly beautiful funerary objects, the excavation also
yielded large numbers of human bones. These were the bones
of sacrificial victims who had either allowed themselves to
be buried alive or were killed outright at the time of the
king's burial. Those who apparently died voluntarily
included soldiers, ceremonial attendants and the king's
servants, but most frightful was the discovery of the bones
of at least fifty-nine people who had been decapitated like
cattle on the southern ramp of the tomb as part of the
burial ceremonies. After the central structure had been
buried, the ramps leading to it were gradually filled in
with layers of earth and groups of decapitated victims were
buried in each layer, the heads of all the victims were
collected and finally buried in the uppermost layer. The
victims were separated according to age, with youths between
fifteen and twenty years of age in the lower layers and
adults in the middle and upper layers. It is possible that
these people were prisoners of war captured by the Shang
king on a campaign against the Ch'iang nomad tribe of the
northwest, who were the traditional enemies of the Shang. In
all at least 164 sacrificial victims were found in various
parts of the tomb, an indication of the awesome grandeur of
a Shang king's funeral.
The exhibition in
National Palace Museum Taipei, comprises most of the
important materials from the Tomb 1001 finds selected by the
Academia Sinica Institute of History and Philology. Emphasis
is placed on the great beauty and advanced craftsmanship of
the various carved objects, and photographs of the actual
excavation process have been included in order to give an
impression of the vast scale of construction of the
grave-mound of a Shang king.
( extracted from exhibition catalogue of National
Palace Museum )
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