The Shang dynasty

The story

A king discovered twice

In 1917 a Chinese scholar, Wang Guowei, compared two lists. The first was the list of the kings of the Shang dynasty written by the historian Sima Qian around 100 BC, in a book called “Records of the Grand Historian”. The second was a list of names of kings carved on bones and turtle shells, discovered a few years earlier. The names matched. It was a sensational discovery: the Shang dynasty, which many regarded as a legend, had really existed, and its bones spoke of kings whom the old historian had listed almost a thousand years later.

So China entered documented history. The bones came from Anyang, a place on the plain north of the Yellow River, in the province of Henan, where a great city, called Yin by the Shang, was the last capital of the dynasty. Scientific excavations began in 1928 and are still going on today.

A dynasty that lasts five centuries

The Shang ruled part of northern China, around the Yellow River, from about 1600 until 1046 BC. The dates are approximate. The starting date varies according to scholars (1600, 1554 and others), while 1046 BC is now the most used value for the end. They did not rule a large united state like Egypt. Their territory was a set of cities and villages that recognised the king's authority, surrounded by peoples who were not always friendly. The king often changed residence: according to tradition the capital was moved several times, until it settled at Yin around 1300 BC.

Society was very hierarchical. At the top was the king, who was also head of the rites; then the nobles, who commanded the armies and owned land; then the craftsmen, the farmers and finally servants and prisoners of war. The king led wars, hunted tigers and deer, and every day consulted the ancestors.

The ancestors' bronze

The Shang were masters of bronze. They produced it in large foundries, with a technique different from the one used in Mesopotamia: instead of casting the metal in a lost model, they prepared clay moulds in several pieces, joined them and poured in the molten bronze. With this system they managed to make enormous, richly decorated vessels. The biggest, the Houmuwu ding, a three-legged cauldron, weighs about 830 kilograms.

These vessels were not for everyday cooking. They were ritual containers, for the food and drink offered to the dead ancestors. The king was convinced that the ancestors, having become powerful spirits, could help or harm the living: they gave good harvests and victories in war, or illness and misfortune. For this reason rites with vessels, sacrifices of animals and, sadly, of people as well, were at the centre of life. In the royal tombs archaeologists have found hundreds of victims buried beside the kings, with chariots and horses.

On the surfaces of the vessels appear animal masks with big eyes, called taotie, made of horns, claws and eyes. Nobody is certain of the meaning: perhaps they protected, perhaps they represented forces of the spirit world.

The warrior queen

In 1976, at Anyang, archaeologists found an intact tomb, the tomb of Fu Hao, one of the wives of King Wu Ding. Inside were 468 bronze objects, including 130 weapons, and more than 700 jade objects. The oracle bones say that Fu Hao led armies, even of thousands of soldiers, and conducted campaigns against neighbouring peoples; the king worried about her when she was pregnant. She was a powerful woman, priestess and commander, an important example in the history of women in China.

The city and its people

At Yin, besides palaces and temples, there were districts of craftsmen: bronze foundries, jade workshops, pottery shops, bone workshops. People grew millet, wheat and rice, raised pigs and oxen and already knew silk and the chariot with horses, which the Shang used in battle and in ceremonies. Cowrie shells, which came from the southern seas, were used as money.

The end of the Shang

Around 1046 BC King Wu, chief of the Zhou, a people of the western borders, defeated the last Shang king in the battle of Muye, near Yin. Tradition tells that the last king, considered cruel, killed himself in the flames. The victor founded the Zhou dynasty, which ruled for almost eight centuries. To explain their victory, the Zhou said that the “Mandate of Heaven” had passed from the Shang to them, because the Shang no longer deserved it. It is an important idea that shaped Chinese thought for three thousand years: a ruler governs as long as he is just.