Oracle bones

Oracle characters on a turtle shell

An oracle bone

On oracle bones ( Chinese 甲骨 , Pinyin Jiǎgǔ - "bone armor") from Yinxu , which originated during the Shang dynasty (approx. 1600–1000 BC), the first evidence of the Chinese script , the so-called oracle script ( 甲骨文 , Jiǎgǔwén - "carapace Scripture"), even oracle bone script ( 甲骨卜辭 / 甲骨卜辞 , Jiǎgǔ Bǔcí - as called "carapace oracle publication") or Schildkrötenpanzer- and animal bones font ( 龜甲獸骨文 / 龟甲兽骨文 , guījiǎ shòugǔwén known).

They were used for divination with the so-called animal bone oracle . When the oracle was questioned, the bones were heated with hot objects to find out the will of the ancestors. The cracks and cracks that occurred when heated were interpreted as the ancestral response. For each survey, the bones were labeled with a foreword, the declaration of intent or the wish, the number and interpretation of the cracks, the prediction derived from them and the confirmation of their occurrence. The information was often distributed over several numbered bones. Today they make a significant contribution to research into early Chinese writing . The vocabulary, which was previously only a third understandable, already comprised around 4,500 different characters .

The first described oracle bones were discovered near Anyang in 1899 . The first systematic archaeological excavations (1928–37) at Anyang later unearthed a large number of oracle bones. Today the number of oracle bones found is over 100,000 and the site near Anyang has been included in the UNESCO World Heritage List .

See also: bronze inscription

literature

TCA / China NB: Document L2 / 15-280: Request for comment on encoding Oracle Bone Script. (PDF, 17 MB) Unicode Consortium, October 31, 2015, accessed on November 5, 2015 . (Information on the possible coding of the oracle bone script in Unicode )
Tsung-Tung Chang : The cult of the Shang dynasty as reflected in the oracle inscriptions: a paleographic study of religion in archaic China. Harrassowitz, 1970

Individual evidence

^ Dieter Kuhn : East Asia until 1800 . S. Fischer, Frankfurt am Main 2014, ISBN 978-3-10-010843-2 , pp. 92 .
↑ Walter Flemmer: The old China . Tessloff, Nürnberg 2000, ISBN 3-7886-0672-X , p. 8 .
^ ^A ^b Dieter Kuhn : East Asia until 1800 . S. Fischer, Frankfurt am Main 2014, ISBN 978-3-10-010843-2 , pp. 134 .
↑ ^a ^b Excavations at Anyang
↑ The History of Chinese Writing

[Kuhn92-1] Dieter Kuhn : East Asia until 1800 . S. Fischer, Frankfurt am Main 2014, ISBN 978-3-10-010843-2 , pp. 92 .

[Flemmer8-2] Walter Flemmer: The old China . Tessloff, Nürnberg 2000, ISBN 3-7886-0672-X , p. 8 .

[Kuhn134-3] A ^b Dieter Kuhn : East Asia until 1800 . S. Fischer, Frankfurt am Main 2014, ISBN 978-3-10-010843-2 , pp. 134 .

[unesco-4] Excavations at Anyang

[5] The History of Chinese Writing