Mao Gong ding
Late Western Zhou, about 800 BC
A round bronze cauldron on three legs, with two upright handles and a plain surface broken only by a band of pattern under the rim, stands in the bronze gallery. It is over half a metre tall and looks, at first, less impressive than the beasts and masks of the earlier Shang vessels nearby. Its importance lies inside. Cast into the inner wall is an inscription of about five hundred characters, the longest ever found on a Chinese bronze, recording a speech by the king of Zhou to his minister, the Duke of Mao.
The king laments the troubles of the realm, praises the duke's ancestors, appoints him to manage the affairs of the court and warns him to be honest, sober and diligent. In return he gives him wine, jade, chariots, horses and ceremonial robes, and the duke casts this vessel so that his descendants will treasure it forever. The characters are in the large seal script of the Western Zhou, elegant and evenly spaced, and scholars have called the text a bronze version of the classic Book of Documents. Look at the plain body, the two rows of raised bosses under the rim, and the hoof shaped legs, all typical of the late Western Zhou style.
The cauldron was dug up by farmers in Qishan county in Shaanxi in the eighteen forties, near the old Zhou capital. It passed through the hands of collectors and dealers, was nearly sold abroad, was hidden from the Japanese during the war, and was finally given to the state in nineteen forty six. It travelled to Taiwan with the palace collection and is now counted among the museum's three great treasures. Stand close and imagine the text being read aloud at a court ceremony almost three thousand years ago.
Did You Know? The inscription is so long that scholars treat it as a historical document in its own right rather than as a label on a pot.
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