Houmuwu Square Cauldron (ding)

The Houmuwu bronze square ding(formerly known as Simuwu ding)is huge,majestic,and weighs 832.84 kg.It is currently known as the heaviest bronze ware in ancient China.The inscription on the inner surface of the belly of the device is“Hou Mu Wu”,which is the temple title of Shang king's mother.

photo/ National Museum of China

It is said to have been excavated in 1939 at Wuguancun,Anyang,Henan Province.

This ding is very thick, with upright handles, foliated edge, rectangular belly, and four cylinder feet. The four corners of the belly, the middle of the upper and lower rims, and the upper part of the feet are all decorated with protruding edges.

The body and four feet of the Hou Mu Wu bronze square ding are cast as a whole,and the handles are cast with molds later.Casting this ding requires more than 1,000 kg of metal raw materials.There are a series of complicated technical problems in making such large-scale artifacts in the process of modeling clay molds,remaking pottery molds,and casting with composite molds.

The casting of the Houmuwu bronze ding fully shows that the bronze casting in the late Shang Dynasty was not only large in scale,but also tightly organized and well-divided,which was sufficient to represent the highly developed bronze culture of the Shang Dynasty.