page_title: Chinese bronze inscriptions
section_title: Inscribed bronzes
hierarchical_section_title: Chinese bronze inscriptions / Inscribed bronzes
caption_attribution_description: Left item: A Chinese bronze "fang zun" ritual wine container, from the Western Zhou Dynasty, dated c. 1000 BC, excavated in modern-day Luoyang. The written inscription cast in bronze on the vessel commemorates a gift of cowrie shells - currency in China at the time - to its owner from someone of presumed elite status in Zhou era society. [1] Right item: A Chinese bronze "fang yi" ritual container, from the Western Zhou Dynasty, dated c. 1000 BC. A written inscription of some 180 Chinese characters appears twice on the vessel, in the interior and on the inside of the lid. The written inscription comments on state rituals that accompany court ceremony, recorded by an official scribe of a Zhou nobleman. [2] From the Freer and Sackler Galleries of Washington D.C.
context_page_description: Chinese bronze inscriptions, also commonly referred to as bronze script or bronzeware script, are writing in a variety of Chinese scripts on ritual bronzes such as zhōng bells and dǐng tripodal cauldrons from the Shang dynasty to the Zhou dynasty and even later. Early bronze inscriptions were almost always cast, while later inscriptions were often engraved after the bronze was cast. The bronze inscriptions are one of the earliest scripts in the Chinese family of scripts, preceded by the oracle bone script.
context_section_description: Of the abundant Chinese ritual bronze artifacts extant today, about 12,000 have inscriptions. These have been periodically unearthed ever since their creation, and have been systematically collected and studied since at least the Song dynasty. The inscriptions tend to grow in length over time, from only one to six or so characters for the earlier Shang examples, to forty or so characters in the longest, late-Shang case, and frequently a hundred or more on Zhou bronzes, with the longest up to around 500.
  
  In general, characters on ancient Chinese bronze inscriptions were arranged in vertical columns, written top to bottom, in a fashion thought to have been influenced by bamboo books, which are believed to have been the main medium for writing in the Shang and Zhou dynasties. The very narrow, vertical bamboo slats of these books were not suitable for writing wide characters, and so a number of graphs were rotated 90 degrees; this style then carried over to the Shang and Zhou oracle bones and bronzes. Examples: 
  Of the 12,000 inscribed bronzes extant today, roughly 3,000 date from the Shang dynasty, 6,000 from the Zhou dynasty, and the final 3,000 from the Qin and Han dynasties.
caption: Left: Bronze fāng zūn ritual wine container, c. 1000 BC. The inscription commemorates a gift of cowrie shells to its owner. Right: Bronze fāng yí ritual container c. 1000 BC. An inscription of some 180 characters appears twice on it, commenting on state rituals that accompany court ceremony, recorded by an official scribe.
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