Heji 1: Bin-group scapula of King Wu Ding's reign, National Museum of China

Not kept here. This copy isn't ours to show. See it where it's published.

The ox scapula fragment that opens the Jiaguwen heji. Its inscription, read in full, records the king's order to the zhongren (the dependent labour force) to work the fields together in expectation of a harvest, in the eleventh month. Another piece of the same bone is Hebu 657. It stands for the legible majority of the corpus against which the unread graphs are measured.

Gary Lee Todd, 1250. CC0 1.0

Copies 2

Photograph (national museum of china display)Gary Lee Todd · commons.wikimedia.org · 2011-09-01 · CC0 1.01 step from the original

Where it's published

Transcription and english readingKuang Yu Chen, Zhenhao Song, Yuan Liu, Matthew Anderson · doi.org · 2020 · publisherPrimary source: Reading of Shang Inscriptions2 steps from the original

Where it's published

Sources 2

Cite it

Mysteries Department. (2026). Heji 1: Bin-group scapula of King Wu Ding's reign, National Museum of China [Artifact ART0DEDNMFA8PPV]. https://mysteriesdept.com/r/ART0DEDNMFA8PPV

@misc{mysteriesdept_art0dednmfa8ppv,
  title     = {Heji 1: Bin-group scapula of King Wu Ding's reign, National Museum of China},
  author    = {{Mysteries Department}},
  year      = {2026},
  note      = {Artifact, catalog key ART0DEDNMFA8PPV},
  url       = {https://mysteriesdept.com/r/ART0DEDNMFA8PPV}
}