Anyang: the last Shang capital and the tomb of Fu Hao
King Pan Geng moves the capital to Yin; from here come the first readable Chinese texts and an untouched royal tomb.
According to the tradition recorded by Sima Qian, King Pan Geng moves the Shang capital around 1300 BCE to Yin—present-day Anyang in northern Henan. Here the dynasty stands until its end, the victory of Zhou around 1046 BCE. Under King Wu Ding, around 1250, scribes carve questions to the ancestors on turtle shells and ox shoulder blades—about the harvest, war, childbirth, toothache; these oracle inscriptions are the oldest readable Chinese texts, and from them the list of kings was reconstructed and found to match the tradition. In 1976 the unplundered tomb of Fu Hao, a wife of Wu Ding, was found at Anyang, with two hundred bronze vessels, jade and weapons: the inscriptions know her as a commander who led armies. The city of Yin, with its palaces, workshops and royal graves, has kept archaeologists busy for a hundred years.
Sources
Documents of the period
- the Records of the Grand Historian by Sima Qian — the transfer of the capital to Yin under Pan Geng
- the Anyang oracle-bone inscriptions — the questions to the ancestors, the list of kings and Fu Hao as a commander
Scholarship
- archaeology of ancient China — the dating to about 1300–1046 BCE and the tomb found in 1976
Basis: documents and evidence.