Beijing Museum Finds, Displays Rare Bronze PieceA recently discovered 3,000-year-old piece of bronze has turned out to be as rare as the way in which it was found, China Daily reported on April 26.The bronze tripod, a three-footed "ding", is marked with characters showing it was cast under orders from a king of the Western Zhou Dynasty (11th century-771 BC). Now the ding is shown at the Poly Art Museum in Beijing. An offshoot of ancient cooking utensils, ding was important to as a central ceremonial object for making sacrifices to ancestors and marking the regime of a king. In Beijing, an X-ray showed six characters under the rust. They probably mean, "The King of Zhou made this bronze ware to contain sacrifices for ancestors.'' And the words zuo shou might indicate that the ding was intended for a place on the left row of the ceremonial objects. According to experts like Yu Weichao, former curator of the Museum of China History, this is the only ding discovered with such engravings. Its phoenix pattern is also rare for similar bronze ware of its era. The museum also holds a quadripod from the Western Zhou period. It remains a mystery why the dragon-patterned ding would have one more foot than the others. |
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