Zu Ding (), personal name Zi Xin, was a king of the Chinese

Shang dynasty The Shang dynasty (), also known as the Yin dynasty (), was a Chinese royal dynasty founded by Tang of Shang (Cheng Tang) that ruled in the Yellow River valley in the second millennium BC, traditionally succeeding the Xia dynasty a ...

Records

In the ''

Records of the Grand Historian ''Records of the Grand Historian'', also known by its Chinese name ''Shiji'', is a monumental history of China that is the first of China's 24 dynastic histories. The ''Records'' was written in the early 1st century by the ancient Chinese his ...

'' he was listed by Sima Qian as the sixteenth Shang king, succeeding his uncle Wo Jia (). He was enthroned in the year of Dingwei () with Bi () as his capital. He ruled for about 32 years before his death. He was given the posthumous name Zu Ding and was succeeded by his cousin Nan Geng ().

Oracle script Oracle bone script () is an ancient form of Chinese characters that were engraved on oracle bonesanimal bones or turtle plastrons used in pyromantic divination. Oracle bone script was used in the late 2nd millennium BC, and is the earliest kno ...

inscriptions on oracle bones unearthed at

Yinxu Yinxu (modern ; ) is the site of one of the ancient and major historical capitals of China. It is the source of the archeological discovery of oracle bones and oracle bone script, which resulted in the identification of the earliest known Chin ...

alternatively record that he was the fifteenth Shang king.

Attempts at chronological dating

The

Xia–Shang–Zhou Chronology Project The Xia–Shang–Zhou Chronology Project () was a multi-disciplinary project commissioned by the People's Republic of China in 1996 to determine with accuracy the location and time frame of the Xia, Shang, and Zhou dynasties. The project was d ...

, a broad Chinese academic enquiry, published results in 2000 placing Zu Ding as a contemporary of the Egyptian pharaoh

Akhenaten Akhenaten (pronounced ), also spelled Echnaton, Akhenaton, ( egy, ꜣḫ-n-jtn ''ʾŪḫə-nə-yātəy'', , meaning "Effective for the Aten"), was an ancient Egyptian pharaoh reigning or 1351–1334 BC, the tenth ruler of the Eighteenth D ...

— the latter's reign beginning later than Zu Ding's, but both terminating in the mid-1330s

BCE Common Era (CE) and Before the Common Era (BCE) are year notations for the Gregorian calendar (and its predecessor, the Julian calendar), the world's most widely used calendar era. Common Era and Before the Common Era are alternatives to the or ...

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Zu Ding Shang dynasty kings