Springer Reading of Shāng Inscriptions

This book introduces readers to oracle bone inscriptions (OBI), the oldest known form of Chinese writing. It presents 120 rubbings made from unearthed animal bones and turtle shells that the Shang royal court employed to record royal divinations 3500 years ago, covering topics ranging from ancestor worship, rituals, and astronomy to agriculture, war, and hunting. Each rubbing is accompanied by a graph-to-graph transcription, a translation and a detailed annotation. The book is intended for both general readers and scholars who are interested in ancient civilizations and Early China in particular, acquainting them not only with OBI graphs and the development of the Chinese writing system, but also the history of the Shang Dynasty. The didactic and tutorial format makes this book ideal for teaching and for self-learning.    Sumerian, Egyptian, Chinese OBI and Mayan constitute the four pristine writing systems. Of these, only Chinese writing has remained logographic and survived to the present day. The study of OBI not only plays a pivotal role in connecting archaeology to history, but is also of great importance to the comparative study of the origin of writing and civilization. Though there are numerous books on Mayan and Egyptian hieroglyphs, there are very few on OBI; this book fills that gap. From the Back Cover This book introduces readers to oracle bone inscriptions (OBI), the oldest known form of Chinese writing. It presents 120 rubbings made from unearthed animal bones and turtle shells that the Shang royal court employed to record royal divinations 3500 years ago, covering topics ranging from ancestor worship, rituals, and astronomy to agriculture, war, and hunting. Each rubbing is accompanied by a graph-to-graph transcription, a translation and a detailed annotation. The book is intended for both general readers and scholars who are interested in ancient civilizations and Early China in particular, acquainting them not only with OBI graphs and the development of the Chinese writing system, but also the history of the Shang Dynasty. The didactic and tutorial format makes this book ideal for teaching and for self-learning.    Sumerian, Egyptian, Chinese OBI and Mayan constitute the four pristine writing systems. Of these, only Chinese writing has remained logographic and survived to the present day. The study of OBI not only plays a pivotal role in connecting archaeology to history, but is also of great importance to the comparative study of the origin of writing and civilization. Though there are numerous books on Mayan and Egyptian hieroglyphs, there are very few on OBI; this book fills that gap. About the Author Kuang Yu Chen is a Distinguished Professor at Rutgers University where he serves at the Department of Chemistry and Chemical Biology, as well as at the Department of Asian Languages and Cultures. He is a board member of the Confucius Institute at Rutgers and an elected Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science. He was a speaker at the 2018 Colloquium Series of the Institute of Archaeology, Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, Beijing, and in 2019, he was the keynote speaker at the International Conference on Paleography and Unearthed Texts at Henan University, Kaifeng.   He studied oracle bone inscriptions (OBI) and Archaeology at National Taiwan University, Taipei and at the Graduate School at Yale University, working under several highly respected scholars, including Jin Xiangheng( 金祥恆  NTU), Li Xiaoding (李孝定NTU), Chang Kwang-chi (張光直 Yale), and JaoTsung-I (饒宗頤 Yale). He has taught OBI at Rutgers University for over 10 years. He also taught a seminar course at Rutgers entitled “Origin of Writing and Civilization.” Zhenhao Song is an Academic Committee Member and Research Fellow at the Institute of History, Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, Beijing. He is also the Director of the Center of Research on Oracle Bone