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Oracle bones are pieces of ox scapula and turtle plastron which were used in pyromancy – a form of divination – during the Late Shang period (c. 1250 – c. 1050 BCE) in ancient China. Scapulimancy is the specific term if ox scapulae were used for the divination, plastromancy if turtle plastrons were used. A recent count estimated that ...
Oracle bone script fragment featuring a character for 'spring' in the top-left which has no known modern descendant. Some characters are only attested in the oracle bone script, dropping out of later usage and usually being replaced by newer characters. An example is a fragment bearing character for 'spring' that has no known modern counterpart.
Wang Yirong (Chinese: 王懿榮; pinyin: Wáng Yìróng; 1845–1900) was a director of the Chinese Imperial Academy, best known as the first to recognize that the symbols inscribed on oracle bones were an early form of Chinese writing. [1]
Keightley was best known for his work on oracle bones and their ability to tell the history of Shang China. His work on oracle bone research is discussed in several of his articles and edits, "Sources of Shang History: The Oracle-Bone Inscriptions of Bronze Age China" goes most in depth about the history on oracle bones.
Scapulimancy (also spelled scapulomancy and scapulamancy, also termed omoplatoscopy or speal bone reading) is the practice of divination by use of scapulae or speal bones (shoulder blades). It is most widely practiced in China and the Sinosphere as oracle bones , but has also been independently developed in other traditions including the West .
Oracle bones serve as the primary source for studies of Shang religion. [2] They focused on the religious life of the king and the royal family. [3] A typical ritual would feature many key roles; David Keightley conjured such a ritual based on actual inscriptional records, attempting to reconstruct a ceremonial scene normally observed by the Shang court.
Oracle bone inscriptions dating back to Wu Ding mention a wide range of unstable connections with tribes and chiefdoms, generally addressed as fang (方). [29] Oracle bone scripts record that the Shang dynasty maintained contact with Guifang ( 鬼方 ), a chiefdom northwest of Yin that was sometimes interpreted as "unfriendly" to the central ...
[f] In oracle bone script, the square pictograph denoted the modern stem ding; this possibly originated from oral expressions, and was related to Shang lineal descent. [88] Inscriptions indicate the square as indicating many possible things, including the subject of a given cult, the space for a ritual, or the ritual itself. [89]