The Sword of Goujian ( zh, c=越王勾践剑, p=Yuèwáng Gōujiàn jiàn, links=no) is a tin bronze sword, renowned for its unusual sharpness, intricate design and resistance to tarnish rarely seen in artifacts of similar age. The sword is generally attributed to Goujian, one of the last kings of Yue during the

Spring and Autumn period The Spring and Autumn period was a period in Chinese history from approximately 770 to 476 BC (or according to some authorities until 403 BC) which corresponds roughly to the first half of the Eastern Zhou period. The period's name derives fr ...

. In 1965, the sword was found in an ancient tomb in

Hubei Hubei (; ; alternately Hupeh) is a landlocked province of the People's Republic of China, and is part of the Central China region. The name of the province means "north of the lake", referring to its position north of Dongting Lake. The p ...

. It is currently in the possession of the

Hubei Provincial Museum The Hubei Provincial Museum ( Chinese: 湖北省博物馆) is one of the best known museums in China, with a large amount of state-level historic and cultural relics. Established in 1953, the museum moved to its present location in 1960 and gaine ...

. In 1994, the sword was damaged by a worker while on loan to Singapore, since then China has forbidden the sword to be exhibited abroad.

Discovery

In 1965, while an archaeological survey was being performed along the second main aqueduct of the Zhang River

Reservoir A reservoir (; from French ''réservoir'' ) is an enlarged lake behind a dam. Such a dam may be either artificial, built to store fresh water or it may be a natural formation. Reservoirs can be created in a number of ways, including contr ...

Jingzhou Jingzhou () is a prefecture-level city in southern Hubei province, China, located on the banks of the Yangtze River. Its total residential population was 5,231,180 based on the 2020 census, 1,068,291 of whom resided in the built-up (''or metro' ...

, Hubei, a series of ancient tombs were discovered in

Jiangling County Jiangling () is a county in southern Hubei province, People's Republic of China. Administratively, it is under the jurisdiction of Jingzhou City. History The county name derived from the old name of Jingzhou. Liang dynasty Prince Xiao Yi 蕭繹 ( ...

. A dig started in the middle of October 1965, ending in January 1966, eventually revealing more than fifty ancient

tombs A tomb ( grc-gre, τύμβος ''tumbos'') is a repository for the remains of the dead. It is generally any structurally enclosed interment space or burial chamber, of varying sizes. Placing a corpse into a tomb can be called ''immureme ...

of the

Chu State Chu, or Ch'u in Wade–Giles romanization, (, Hanyu Pinyin: Chǔ, Old Chinese: ''*s-r̥aʔ'') was a Zhou dynasty vassal state. Their first ruler was King Wu of Chu in the early 8th century BCE. Chu was located in the south of the Zhou ...

. More than 2,000 artifacts were recovered from the sites, including an ornate

bronze Bronze is an alloy consisting primarily of copper, commonly with about 12–12.5% tin and often with the addition of other metals (including aluminium, manganese, nickel, or zinc) and sometimes non-metals, such as phosphorus, or metalloids suc ...

sword A sword is an edged, bladed weapon intended for manual cutting or thrusting. Its blade, longer than a knife or dagger, is attached to a hilt and can be straight or curved. A thrusting sword tends to have a straighter blade with a pointed ti ...

, found inside a casket together with a human skeleton. The casket was discovered in December 1965, at Wangshan site #1, from the ruins of

Ying Ying may refer to: People * Yíng (嬴), a Chinese surname, the ancestral name of Qin Shi Huang, first Emperor of China in the Qin Dynasty, and some contemporary rival royal families such as the Zhaos * Yīng (应), a Chinese surname from the Z ...

, currently called Jinancheng ), an ancient capital of Chu. The sword was found sheathed in a wooden

scabbard A scabbard is a sheath for holding a sword, knife, or other large blade. As well, rifles may be stored in a scabbard by horse riders. Military cavalry and cowboys had scabbards for their saddle ring carbine rifles and lever-action rifles on the ...

finished in black

lacquer Lacquer is a type of hard and usually shiny coating or finish applied to materials such as wood or metal. It is most often made from resin extracted from trees and waxes and has been in use since antiquity. Asian lacquerware, which may be c ...

. The scabbard had an almost air-tight fit with the sword body. Unsheathing the sword revealed an untarnished blade, despite the tomb being soaked in underground water for over 2,000 years.

Identification

On one side of the blade, two columns of text are visible. Eight characters are written in an ancient

script Script may refer to: Writing systems * Script, a distinctive writing system, based on a repertoire of specific elements or symbols, or that repertoire * Script (styles of handwriting) ** Script typeface, a typeface with characteristics of ha ...

, now known as

Bird-worm seal script The bird-worm seal script () is a type of ancient seal script originating in China. Names The Chinese character (''Niǎo'') means "bird" and the character (') means "insect", but can also mean any creature that looks like a "worm", includin ...

(literally "birds and worms characters", owing to the intricate decorations of the defining strokes), a variant of

seal script Seal script, also sigillary script () is an ancient style of writing Chinese characters that was common throughout the latter half of the 1st millennium BC. It evolved organically out of the Zhou dynasty bronze script. The Qin variant of se ...

. Initial analysis of the text deciphered six of the characters, "King of Yue" (越王) and "made this sword for ispersonal use" (自作用劍). The remaining two characters were assumed to be the name of the particular King of Yue. From the sword's origin in 510 BC to the kingdom's demise at the hands of the Chu in 334 BC, nine kings ruled Yue, including Goujian,

Lu Cheng Lu Cheng (盧程) was an official of the Chinese Five Dynasties and Ten Kingdoms period Later Tang state (and Later Tang's predecessor state Jin), briefly serving as a chancellor at the time of the founding of Later Tang. Background It is not kn ...

, Bu Shou, and

Zhu Gou Zhu or ZHU may refer to: *Zhu (surname), common Chinese surnames *Zhu River, or Pearl River, in southern China *Zhu (state), ancient Chinese state, later renamed Zou *House of Zhu, the ruling house of the Ming dynasty in Chinese history *Zhu (stri ...

. The identity of the king named in the sword inscription sparked debate among archeologists and Chinese language scholars. The discussion was carried out mostly via letter, and involved famous scholars such as Guo Moruo. After more than two months, the experts started to form a consensus that the original owner of the sword was Goujian (勾踐), the King of Yue made famous by his perseverance in time of hardship.

Construction

The sword of Goujian is in length, including an

hilt The hilt (rarely called a haft or shaft) of a knife, dagger, sword, or bayonet is its handle, consisting of a guard, grip and pommel. The guard may contain a crossguard or quillons. A tassel or sword knot may be attached to the guard or pommel ...

; the blade is wide at its base. The sword weighs . In addition to the repeating dark

rhombi In plane Euclidean geometry, a rhombus (plural rhombi or rhombuses) is a quadrilateral whose four sides all have the same length. Another name is equilateral quadrilateral, since equilateral means that all of its sides are equal in length. The ...

pattern on both sides of the blade, there are decorations of blue crystals and

turquoise Turquoise is an opaque, blue-to-green mineral that is a hydrated phosphate of copper and aluminium, with the chemical formula . It is rare and valuable in finer grades and has been prized as a gemstone and ornamental stone for thousands of year ...

. The grip of the sword is bound by

silk Silk is a natural protein fiber, some forms of which can be woven into textiles. The protein fiber of silk is composed mainly of fibroin and is produced by certain insect larvae to form cocoons. The best-known silk is obtained from th ...

, while the pommel is composed of eleven

concentric circles In geometry, two or more objects are said to be concentric, coaxal, or coaxial when they share the same center or axis. Circles, regular polygons and regular polyhedra, and spheres may be concentric to one another (sharing the same center poi ...

Chemical composition

The Sword of Goujian still has a sharp blade and shows no signs of tarnish. To understand why, scientists at

Fudan University Fudan University () is a national public research university in Shanghai, China. Fudan is a member of the C9 League, Project 985, Project 211, and the Double First Class University identified by the Ministry of Education of China. It is als ...

and

CAS Cas may refer to: * Caș, a type of cheese made in Romania * ' (1886–) Czech magazine associated with Tomáš Garrigue Masaryk * '' Čas'' (19 April 1945–February 1948), the official, daily newspaper of the Democratic Party of Slovakia * ''CA ...

used modern equipment to determine the chemical composition of the sword, as shown in the table below.

Amount of elements by percentage

The body of the blade is mainly made of copper, making it more pliant and less likely to shatter; the edges have more tin content, making them harder and capable of retaining a sharper edge; the sulfur decreases the chance of tarnish in the patterns. It is likely that the chemical composition, along with the almost

air-tight A hermetic seal is any type of sealing that makes a given object airtight (preventing the passage of air, oxygen, or other gases). The term originally applied to airtight glass containers, but as technology advanced it applied to a larger categor ...

, led to the exceptional state of preservation.

Damage

While on loan to Singapore for display as part of a cultural exchange exhibition in 1994, a worker accidentally bumped the sword against the case, resulting in a crack on the sword. Since then, China has not allowed the sword to be taken out of the country, and in 2013 officially placed the sword onto the

list of Chinese cultural relics forbidden to be exhibited abroad The list of Chinese cultural relics forbidden to be exhibited abroad (Chinese: 禁止出境展览文物; pinyin: Jìnzhǐ Chūjìng Zhǎnlǎn Wénwù) comprises a list of antiquities and archaeological artifacts held by various museums and other in ...

References

External links

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{{DEFAULTSORT:Sword Of Goujian Archaeological artifacts of China Ancient Chinese swords Yue (state) 1965 archaeological discoveries Individual weapons