The Da He ''ding'' or Da He ''fangding'' () is an ancient Chinese bronze rectangular '' ding'' vessel from the late

Shang dynasty The Shang dynasty (), also known as the Yin dynasty (), was a Chinese royal dynasty that ruled in the Yellow River valley during the second millennium BC, traditionally succeeding the Xia dynasty and followed by the Western Zhou d ...

( 1600–1046 BC). Unearthed in

Tanheli Tanheli () is an archaeological site in Ningxiang, Hunan, one of major national historical and cultural sites in Hunan. Situated in the upper reaches of the Wei River in Tanheli village, Huangcai town, Ningxiang, it is renowned as a Bronze Age ...

Ningxiang Ningxiang () is a county-level city and the 2nd most populous county-level division in the Province of Hunan, China; it is under the administration of the prefecture-level city of Changsha. The city is bordered to the north by Heshan District o ...

Hunan Hunan is an inland Provinces of China, province in Central China. Located in the middle reaches of the Yangtze watershed, it borders the Administrative divisions of China, province-level divisions of Hubei to the north, Jiangxi to the east, Gu ...

in 1959, it is on display in the

Hunan Museum The Hunan Museum () is the provincial museum of Hunan, China. It was built in 1951 and opened to the public in July 1956. It is located in the provincial capital Changsha at No. 50, Dongfeng Lu next to the Revolutionary Martyr's Park. It spans a ...

. Uniquely decorated with a

high-relief Relief is a sculptural method in which the sculpted pieces remain attached to a solid background of the same material. The term ''relief'' is from the Latin verb , to raise (). To create a sculpture in relief is to give the impression that th ...

human face on each of its four sides, it is the only known ancient Chinese bronze cauldron to use human faces as decoration.

Description

The Da He ''ding'' is named for the inscription in

bronzeware script Chinese bronze inscriptions, also referred to as bronze script or bronzeware script, comprise Chinese writing made in several styles on ritual bronzes mainly during the Late Shang dynasty () and Western Zhou dynasty (771 BC). Types of bron ...

on its interior wall, which reads "Da He" (), or "Great Grain". Judging by the inscription, it may have been used during sacrifices for harvest. The 11th publication of the

Tsinghua bamboo slips The Tsinghua Bamboo Strips () are a collection of Chinese texts dating to the Warring States period and written in ink on strips of bamboo, that were acquired in 2008 by Tsinghua University, China. The texts were obtained by illegal excavation, ...

research team revealed a text which clarifies "Da He" to be the name of one of four direction gods. Although the Da He ''ding'' was discovered in the southern

Yangtze The Yangtze or Yangzi ( or ) is the longest river in Eurasia and the third-longest in the world. It rises at Jari Hill in the Tanggula Mountains of the Tibetan Plateau and flows including Dam Qu River the longest source of the Yangtze, i ...

region, its inscription closely resembles those found in the core

Zhongyuan Zhongyuan (), the Central Plain(s), also known as Zhongtu (, lit. 'central land') and Zhongzhou (, lit. 'central region'), commonly refers to the part of the North China Plain surrounding the lower and middle reaches of the Yellow River, centere ...

region of the Shang dynasty. The ''ding'' is rectangular, with four legs, a common shape during the late Shang. It is high, and its opening measures by , which is slightly larger than its bottom. The most unique feature of the vessel is that each of its four sides are decorated with a dominant

human face The face is the front of the head that features the eyes, nose and mouth, and through which animals express many of their emotions. The face is crucial for human identity, and damage such as scarring or developmental deformities may affect t ...

, which is not found in any other ancient Chinese bronzeware. Around the faces are small symbolic decorations of horns and claws, indicating a half-human, half-animal nature of the figures. There are many speculations regarding the identity of the figures, including ancient mythological figures such as

Taotie The ''taotie'' is an ancient Chinese mythological creature that was commonly emblazoned on bronze and other artifacts during the 1st millennium BCE. ''Taotie'' are one of the Four Perils in Chinese classics like the ''Classic of Mountains an ...

Zhurong Zhurong (), also known as Chongli (), is an important personage in Chinese mythology and Chinese folk religion. According to the ''Huainanzi'' and the philosophical texts of Mozi and his followers, Zhurong is a god of fire and of the south. The ...

Chiyou Chiyou () is a mythological being that appears in Chinese mythology. He was a tribal leader of the Nine Li tribe () in ancient China. He is best known as a king who lost against the future Yellow Emperor during the Three Sovereigns and Five Empero ...

, and the four-faced

Yellow Emperor The Yellow Emperor, also known as the Yellow Thearch, or Huangdi ( zh, t=黃帝, s=黄帝, first=t) in Chinese, is a mythical Chinese sovereign and culture hero included among the legendary Three Sovereigns and Five Emperors. He is revered as ...

. They may also represent Nuo masks or local ancestral deities.

Discovery

The Da He ''ding'' was unearthed in 1959 at

(now an archaeological park) in Huangcai Town, Ningxiang County,

Province. A peasant digging in his field accidentally discovered the vessel and sold it as

scrap metal Scrap consists of recyclable materials, usually metals, left over from product manufacturing and consumption, such as parts of vehicles, building supplies, and surplus materials. Unlike waste, scrap can have monetary value, especially recover ...

. This was during the

Great Leap Forward The Great Leap Forward was an industrialization campaign within China from 1958 to 1962, led by the Chinese Communist Party (CCP). Party Chairman Mao Zedong launched the campaign to transform the country from an agrarian society into an indu ...

, when

backyard furnace In China, backyard furnaces () were large and small blast furnaces used by the people of China during the Great Leap Forward (1958–1962). These were constructed in the fields and backyards of communes to further the Great Leap Forward's aims o ...

s were numerous in China. It was sorted and sent to a scrap copper warehouse in

Changsha Changsha is the capital of Hunan, China. It is the 15th most populous city in China with a population of 10,513,100, the Central China#Cities with urban area over one million in population, third-most populous city in Central China, and the ...

, the capital of Hunan. An employee from the Hunan Museum who was posted at the warehouse to rescue cultural relics, spotted a broken piece from the vessel. He searched the warehouse for the remaining parts, eventually locating more than ten pieces, only missing one leg and the bottom. The pieces were reassembled by Zhang Xinru (), a bronze repair expert at the Hunan Museum. The missing leg was also found two years later and put back on the vessel.

Gallery

References

{{Chinese bronzeware Ningxiang History of Changsha Collection of the Hunan Museum Shang dynasty bronzeware 1959 archaeological discoveries Dings (vessel) 2nd-millennium BC works Archaeological discoveries in China Chinese cultural relics forbidden to be exhibited abroad