| Cooking vessel,133 cm high, rim 110 cm long and79 cm wide, weight 832.84 kg, late Shang (c 14th-1lth century BC);unearthed in 1939 at Wuguan Village, Anyang, Henan Province. Simple and dignified, this huge ding is the heaviest of the bronzes retrieved so far. With the three characters Si Mu Wu inscribed on the body, the ding was cast for King Zu Geng, or Zu Jia, of Shang to offer sacrifice to his mother. The body and legs of the vessel were cast in one pouring, while the handles were precast and fitted onto it by another casting. Making such a huge bronze requires over 1,000 kg of metals and a very large furnace. A test showed that the bronze contains 84.77%copper, 11.64% tin and 2.79% lead, conforming basically to the recorded proportion of copper to tin in casting bronze ding. The Si Mu Wu ding fully demonstrates the scale and technical level of bronze casting in the Shang Dynasty. |
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