The Largest Bronze Vessel Ever Casted 司母戊大鼎 | Chinese History - The Shang Dynasty E26

Now, every single ancient civilization on this planet has definitely gone through the Bronze Age as part of its evolution. Now, however, only the ancient Chinese attached so much cultural, social and even spiritual meaning and symbolism to bronzeware that goes far beyond their basic use as tools and daily implements. Now, this is shown especially in these implements called the bronze vessels or the tíng, which are basically giant cooking pots that stood on three or four legs. Now, the biggest and most important piece of bronzeware was actually a tíng or a bronze vessel known as the sīmǔwù tíng, sīmǔwù dà tíng or the sīmǔwù, giant bronze vessel. Now, it was created at the peak of Shang Dynasty Bronze Age culture, displaying the pinnacle of the scale and sophistication of Shang Dynasty bronze working technology and skills. Now, this tripod vessel can be said to be the indisputable symbol of Chinese Bronze Age culture, although its beginnings can be traced back to the clay and earthenware or pottery tripod vessels created by the very early Chinese of the Neolithic period. So, what's so special about this tripod vessel and why is it such an important piece of ancient artefact that effectively affected how people look at ancient Bronze Age culture? Hello there and welcome to the show. My name is Api Ngo. I'm that Chinese history guy. Here, we share the myths, legends and histories of the Chinese people from the first creator to the last imperial dynasty. More than 6,000 years of stories, one video at a time. And before we continue, please remember to give us a like, sub, comment and a share. Now, as mentioned earlier on in the introduction, these bronze things or these bronze vessels were an evolution of the early pottery vessels that were created during the Neolithic period. Now, the development of these seemingly mundane vessels reached its peak during the Shang and Western Zhou dynasty in Chinese history. And during the Shang dynasty, great importance was placed on these vessels as an integral part of worship and sacrificial rituals. And this trend continued throughout the Zhou dynasty and only really began to taper off during the Han dynasty, which was basically more than a thousand years later. Now, of course, as mentioned, these vessels were originally created to be used as a cooking and dining implements. Basically, they were just giant pots where you threw in all the meats and the vegetables, filled it up with water and you light a fire under it. So yeah, they were basically giant pots used for cooking and you eat directly out of these pots. But over time, they started taking on a more and more important role as ceremonial vessels that contain these sacred offerings and sacrifices which were made to their ancestors during their worship of the heavens. Now, due to this new role as a vessel containing these sacrifices and offerings, due to the role that they played in society, these vessels became symbols of authority and mystical powers taking on more and more gravitas in their symbolism over time. And soon, systems of rules and regulations sprang up around the ownership and display of these vessels in relation to the rank and station of their owners. Now, it was a way to distinguish the nobles and the higher classes of society from basically the plebs and the common people. Now, today we know that the number of the vessels that each individual can own and display is strictly regulated. In fact, it was recorded that the kings shall have nine vessels, vessel lords shall have seven. High officials of the court shall have five, and the common bureaucrats shall display only three or one. Now, this tradition of using these bronze vessels or these bronze things to display the status, to show the status of its owners, basically started from the beginning of the Xia Dynasty, when Yu the Great cast the nine great bronze vessels from the bronze collected from all the clans of the land, and they were displayed in the capital as a show of power, as a symbol of the sovereignty of the authority of the Xia Dynasty kings. And of course, it was said that he who owns the nine great vessels owns the land. And therefore, from that time onwards, well actually a bit later, from the founding of the Shang Dynasty onwards to the Zhou Dynasty and every other dynasty after that, the term to settle the vessels, or tíng tíng, the term is used to mean the establishment of a new capital or even the founding of a new kingdom or dynasty. And when the Shang overthrew the Xia, the nine vessels which Yu casted, like we mentioned earlier, the nine vessels were moved to their new capital at Haocheng, and they were settled there. So yeah, so settling the vessels, that's where it came from. And when the Zhou replaced the Shang Dynasty later, the vessels were once again moved to the new capital at Haocheng, where they were settled once again. So yeah, settling the vessels basically means establishing a new capital or the founding of a new kingdom or a new dynasty. Now for modern archaeologists, these vessels, they hold another very important significance. They are actually a great source of historical accounts and records of events that happened during that time. Now many of these Shang and Zhou Dynasty laws and the details of their worships and their battles and their wars were actually inscribed into the wars of these vessels to be passed now in perpetuity as a form of memorial. Now it was also through these inscriptions that etymologists discovered the Zhou Dynasty's large seal script or dazhuan, or it was also known as the bronze script, jingwen, for obvious reasons. They were inscribed on bronze vessels, so they were known as bronze scripts. Now although bronze inscriptions started appearing around the time of King Pangeng of the Shang Dynasty, it really only developed and flourished during the Zhou Dynasty. Yeah, so to put it in context, during the Shang Dynasty, the script they were known for were actually the oracle bone script, jiaguwen, and the Zhou Dynasty was when the writing system developed and jingwen, or the bronze script, became more matured and it was more established. Now however, if we were to look purely at the scale and the level of sophistication in casting and the artistic value of these implements, then the indisputable representative of the ancient Chinese people's skills at bronze casting would be this piece called or is also known as which was produced about around 1200 to 1100 BCE. Now the name of this bronze vessel and the time, the rough time period where it was produced is kind of still in dispute until today and we will get into a bit more detail about this dispute towards later on in the video. But yeah, it's still generally considered to be produced about the 1200 to 1100 BCE and yeah, we will get into more detail later on. So what's so special about this Simuwu Giant Bronze Vessel? For one, although most of the ceremonial vessels are three-legged round containers, round vessels, the Simuwu Bronze Vessel is the most famous of the four-legged rectangular vessels. Now it is also the biggest and heaviest piece of bronzeware that was excavated from anywhere on this planet. So yeah, it actually weighs in at 832.84 kilograms and for our friends in the Americas, that's about 1836.1 pounds. Yeah, one giant bronze vessel that weighs near the 2,000 pounds. And from the casting lines, researchers could tell that the vessel was constructed through the process of what I believe is called piece molding. Any one of you out there who are more knowledgeable about bronze casting, you might want to chime in. But this is what I could kind of figure out. Yeah, I tried my best. Okay, so please correct me if I made any mistakes in this more technical part. So yeah, the scholars, based on what they saw, based on what they could discover, could tell that this vessel was constructed through the process of piece molding. Due to its extremely large size, the body of the vessel itself was constructed out of eight separate pieces of ceramic molds with the bottom of this body alone, with the bottom alone taking up four pieces of molds. And the legs themselves were cast from each piece of leg, was cast from three pieces of molds. So yeah, eight pieces of mold for the body, three each for each leg. So what, 20 pieces of molds in total to cast this one vessel. Interestingly, the bronze that was used to cast this spectacular display of human craftsmanship of the era, the bronze that was used was an alloy of 84.77% copper, 11.64% tin, and 2.79% lead. Which from what I understand, even in today's term, would be considered to be pretty good quality and pretty good standard of bronze. Now the amount and the precision of the materials needed was actually a huge, huge challenge in casting this behemoth. And because based on archaeological finds, the ceramic crucibles that were used for melting bronze during the Shang dynasty, these crucibles roughly held about 12.7 kilograms of molten metal each. And I mean 12.7 kilos, it was a volume that's adequate for most casting needs. However, to melt enough bronze to cast the Simuwu giant bronze vessel, they would need to fire up almost 70 crucibles at the same time. And assuming an average of three to four craftsmen to control the fire, to control the melting and the pouring of each crucible, the entire endeavor would require the near perfect coordination of upwards of 300 top level bronze craftsmen and artisans. And all of them will be working in tandem at near perfect synchrony to create this pinnacle of bronzeware. Because for those of you who understand bronze casting, you can't cast it piece by piece. It has to be cast at one go. So yeah, more than 800 kilograms or more than 1800 pounds of bronze would be melted and poured and cast at the same time. So yeah, and remember this was accomplished about 1200, 1100 BCE. So wow. So when was the Simuwu giant bronze vessel discovered and how was it unearthed? Now the story goes that this Simuwu Dating was unearthed in Wuguan village in Anyang, Henan in March 1939 by a local farmer named Wu Xizheng. Now after the oracle bones which we spoke about in the previous episode, after they were discovered in Xiaotun village also in Anyang, the nationalist government or the KMT government who were in charge at that time, embarked on massive archaeological digs and excavations in the entire area which actually stopped after 1937 when the Japanese invaded, during the Japanese invasion of China. Now life under Japanese occupation would be difficult to put it mildly and food was hard to come by and jobs, what jobs? So in a way a new form of profession sprang up in the area around Anyang. So what happened was that many of these local residents who were previously farmers and all kinds of villagers became treasure hunters. So what they did was that they went around digging in the land in Anyang because it's by now well known to hold ancient artefacts and antiques in the ground. So these treasure hunters started digging in the land for artefacts to be sold to collectors or antique merchants at basically relatively low prices, all they need is just some money for them to buy food and survive through this occupation period. And so a form of unwritten rule also sprang up that there was an understanding that while these hunters were not restricted in where they could dig for these artefacts, the owners of the land where the artefacts were found were actually entitled to half of the profits that these treasure hunters would get from selling the artefacts that they found. Now it was with this understanding that Wu Shizheng, that we mentioned earlier, Wu Shizheng, it was with this understanding that he began working on the lands of his cousin, a man by the name of Wu Peiwen. Now Wu Shizheng started working in the night and slightly after midnight, his probing stick, his probing rod hit something hard about 10 meters in the ground and it could not go any further. And when he retrieved this rod, he found that the blade tip, the tip of these probing rods were basically blades. So this blade tip had actually curved over and had actually scraped up some greenish bronze patina and that was how he knew that he had struck gold. Pun not intended. And so Wu Shizheng, he immediately went back to his cousin to tell him about his find and after some deliberations and consideration, they decided to round up some trusted friends, close friends, to attempt a recovery of what Wu Shizheng found in the ground. And so that night, they took turns digging a hole just wide enough to accommodate a single person working, a hole that went straight down to try and see what Wu Shizheng had found. And they finally struck metal, they finally struck bronze sometime near dawn. But however, they were unable to get a good look at what they had found as it was simply too big and too heavy to haul it back up to the surface. And so after swearing everyone on site to secrecy, Wu Shizheng camouflaged the hole, basically put some branches and covered it with leaves and loose soil. He camouflaged the hole and made plans for everyone to come back and continue their work that same night. And so on the night of the 16th of March 1939, the group returned and they actually rounded up even more people from the village. And this time, they had more than 30 helpers working in the dark to expand the hole that they made the previous night, to make it as large as possible, as quickly as possible. And around midnight on the 16th of March 1939, they finally saw what they had found under the dim light of the torches that they were carrying. Now lying in the mud, about 10 plus meters, you know, under the surface area was a giant bronze vessel with its opening towards the northeast, the lakes towards the southwest, and one handle pointing to the sky. And they have a big problem now. How are they going to move such a giant, massive, heavy piece of artifact out of the ground? So over the next three nights, with the help of these more than 30 people who had been working on the site, and three pack animals, they painstakingly dragged the vessel out of this 13 meter deep hole, inch by inch, while elevating the bottom of the hole with, you know, they lifted it up a bit, they filled out the bottom with soil, and they lifted it up a bit, and then they filled it out, and then they dragged it out of the hole, 30 meters deep, and who knows how much distance to the edge. And once they managed to get the whole thing out, Wu Shizheng then hid the vessel under a compost heap, and went out to find a buyer for it. They had to hide it because, remember guys, they are still living under Japanese occupation. And the thing is, although they worked in secret under the cover of night, and Wu Shizheng did a good job of, you know, hiding this discovery, word of the discovery still got out, and more than a hundred Japanese soldiers appeared in the village just after Wu Shizheng left to find a buyer. And fortunately, although these Japanese soldiers knew that the villagers found something, they had no idea what they found, and therefore they had no idea what they were looking for. So they ransacked Wu Peiwen's house, they ransacked it, turned it upside down, and when they couldn't find anything in there, they just left. Now when Wu Shizheng, you know, returned to the village, he came back with one of Pei Jing's, at the time he will be known as Pei Ping if I'm not wrong, he returned with one of his premier antique merchants and evaluator, this person named Xiao Yingqing. Now Xiao Yingqing saw what they have discovered, and he was so impressed with the find, that on the spot, he offered them 200,000 silver dollars to buy it, to take it off their hands. Now how much is 200,000 silver dollars? Basically, if we convert it into today's currency, it would be roughly about 20 million US dollars today. Yeah, so they had made a 20 million dollar fine. However, there was a slight problem. Xiao Yingqing's condition for the purchase of this artifact was that they had to cut this vessel into more than 40 little pieces for him to transport them back, in pieces, back to Pei Jing where he would be able to find a buyer where he would be able to sell it on. And he of course made a promise to return with the money while they proceed with cutting up this giant bronze vessel. Now the villagers, you know, of course they were ecstatic. I mean 20 million bucks, it could feed the entire village for like, damn, I have no idea how long it will feed the village, but it's definitely a long time, most probably they will be settled for the rest of their lives. So of course, they got to attempting to cut up this giant bronze vessel. However, they went through dozens and dozens of saw blades without as much as leaving a scratch on the Simu Wu Ting. And so they thought that, yeah, since we can't saw it apart, let's smash it apart. So they, you know, brought giant sledgehammers to try to break it apart instead. But when they finally managed to break off one of the handles, or we call it one of the gears of this vessel, they suddenly, you know, felt a bit tentative about the whole exercise. They suddenly thought like, you know, what if the buyer don't return? You know, what if he does not return with the money? Would we have, you know, destroyed a priceless artifact for no reason? And with that thought in mind, they decided to once again hide the vessel in a safe place and will only proceed with the cutting up or the parting out of this artifact after the money is safely in their hands. But yeah, Xiao Yun Qing, the antique merchant, never showed up in the village again. Now, although the merchant did not return with the money, never returned, disappeared, never to be heard of again, the Japanese came back again. So once again, you know, they heard of a transaction going on regarding a historical artifact, and they made a return to the village. And in a bid to misdirect the Japanese, these villagers, they moved the vessel to a new hiding place and they replaced this vessel with some, you know, lower value artifacts they either bought from somewhere else or they dug up from other parts of the ground. They made a show of hiding these low value artifacts and they hid the real treasure, you know, somewhere else. And this was a bid to, of course, misdirect the Japanese. And lo and behold, the Japanese soldiers found these artifacts, low value ones, and they thought that they had found what these villagers had discovered. And they finally left. For good or not is in dispute. There are a few different versions of the story, but let's say they left. And after this incident, fearing for his own life, because, I mean, obviously by now he's being mocked by the Japanese, Wu Peiwen left the village to hide in Jiangsu, and he only returned after the war ended. Now, after the war in the year 1946, the village, this area, this entire region was under the control of the Nationalist 31st Army Group. And their commanding officer, Lieutenant General Wang Zhonglian, heard about this discovery and he heard about this vessel. And he thought it would make a perfect birthday present for then KMT President, Mr. Chiang Kai-shek. So he took the vessel from the villagers and he had the vessel transported to Nanjing, where it was placed in the care of the National Central Museum, which is today's Nanjing Museum. Now, the vessel was officially unveiled and displayed in public for the first time in the summer of 1948. However, by the spring of 1949, the Nationalist government, the KMT, was already preparing for its retreat to Taiwan after being defeated by the Communists in the Chinese Civil War, in a way. So, you know, it was first displayed in 1948 summer, and by spring 1949, the Nationalist government was preparing for a retreat to Taiwan. And, of course, they would be bringing a lot of these national treasures and artifacts with them to Taiwan. And, of course, the Simuwu Giant Bronze Vessel was amongst the national treasures to be brought along. But, however, due to its massive size and weight, they could not load it onto the aeroplane and it had to be left behind in the airport. And so, when the PLA arrived at the airport, they found it sitting there in one of these halls. So, they dragged it back to the Nanjing Museum, where it was kept until 1959, when it was moved once again to Beijing's newly established National Museum of China, where it is kept and preserved until today. Now, the handle that was broken off in 1939 was actually never recovered, and the conservators used the remaining handle, the remaining gear, as a template to recreate a new one to repair the damage that's done. So, when you see this vessel in the National Museum of China now, one of the years is actually a replica. It's not the original. So, yeah, that's a little bit of trivia for you. So, what are the technical specifications of this giant bronze vessel that we've been talking about for so long? Now, the Simuwu Date was also known, or rather, is also known as the Houmuwu Ding. We'll get to that debate in a while, okay? It measures 133 cm, or 52 inches in height, 110 cm, or 43 inches wide, and 79 cm, or 31 inches deep. And the weight, as we mentioned before, was 832.84 kilograms, which is about 1,836.1 pounds. Now, each side of this vessel, of this rectangular vessel, has a blank space in the middle, which was surrounded by a band of decoration featuring the Taotie, or the Kui Long, or one-legged dragons. And the two handles, or the two gears, were each decorated on the exterior, with two tigers facing each other, and their jaws closing around a human head in between them. And this was an image that's interestingly also found on Queen Fu Hao's battle axes. And if you want to know more about that, there's an episode on Queen Fu Hao. Most probably a link will be up here. Yeah. So, and the inscription, Simuwu, could be found on the inside of this vessel. Now, this is the controversy and the debate that has been raging on until today. The inscription found on the inside of the vessel was originally read as Simuwu, which means to worship Mother Wu. But since the 1970s, some scholars have reached the consensus that the first character should be read as Hou, which meant queen, and the writing is kind of like a mirror image of the character Si in Oracle Bone script. And therefore, it should be known as a Hou Mu Wu Ding. Now, this will cause some problems, because the original reading of this inscription, Simuwu Ding, would mean that the owner of this bronze vessel was supposed to have been a wife of King Wu Yi. Yeah, we spoke about him before as well, who reigned roughly between 1147 to 1112 BCE. And the person who dedicated, who commissioned the creation of this thing would have been her son, King Wen Ding, who reigned between 1112 BC to 1102 BC. Now, however, if we read the inscription as Hou Mu Wu, it would then refer to another character entirely. It would make it the temple title of a Fu Jing, who lived actually much earlier, and that would throw the whole ownership and the date of creation of this bronze vessel into a bit of a flux. Now, there is another school of thought that argues that the term Hou was actually not used as a title for a king's wife until the spring and autumn period, which would not happen for another thousand years, basically. And it never appeared as a title in any of the oracle bones that has been discovered so far. And therefore, it doesn't make sense to read it as Hou Mu Wu or to understand the term as a title, you know, for queen. And it would make more sense, definitely, to read it as Si, which is a simplification of the word Si, which would mean to worship. So, you know, the dedication or the inscription on the bronze vessel would actually mean, you know, in worship of my mother Wu. So, yeah, it would make more sense in this case. Now, the debate between these two schools of thought has raged on, you know, until today there's still no conclusion to who is right and who is wrong. The correct interpretation of this inscription is still up in the air. And while the National Museum of China in Beijing has officially changed the name to Hou Mu Wu Ding, the National Museum of Chinese Writing, which basically is a museum for etymology, for writing, for words, for language, they still retain the use of the original name Si Mu Wu Da Ding. So, yeah, I don't know. Would we actually see the end of this debate? Would we actually see a conclusion to this controversy in our lifetimes? We most probably would not. I don't know. What do you think? Well, yeah, that was a pretty long video and I hope you enjoyed watching it as much as I enjoyed making it. Now, if you did, yeah, don't forget to give us a like, sub, comment and share. And if you would like to do more and support this little project in more tangible ways, you can do so on Patreon. The links are available at the description box down below. And here's a little shout out to our current patrons of the page. Thank you so much. I really appreciate it. You really, really help to keep the lights on around here and you help, you know, keep things going and keep things running. So, thank you so much. You have no idea how much you are helping the channel out. And yeah, I guess that's it for today. And I will see you, yeah, you, you, you, don't turn around. That's you. Yeah, you beautiful people out there. I will see you in the next episode.