What is Oracle and what is Oracle?

The oracle bone inscription is the earliest and relatively complete ancient script found in China. The oracle bone inscription mainly refers to the Yinxu oracle bone inscription, also known as "Yinxu script" and "Yin Qi", which is the text engraved on the tortoiseshell animal bone in the Yin Shang era. At the end of the 19th century, it was discovered at the site of the capital of the Yin Dynasty by Xiaotun in present-day Anyang, Henan, inheriting the method of Taowen, which was used by the royal family in the late Shang Dynasty (14th and 11th centuries BC) to engrave (or write) on tortoise shells and animal bones for divination.

After the fall of the Yin Shang dynasty and the rise of the Zhou Dynasty, the oracle bone inscription was also used for a period of time.

The oracle bone inscription is a notepad used by ancient humans to record sacrifices, time, and important events, I used to buy two pieces in a Chinese medicine shop, and no one knew what was engraved on it, anyway, a total of 4 things that seemed to be words were drawn, and I thought it was an oracle bone inscription and bought it, I don't know if it was.

A type of hieroglyphic script from ancient times.

A type of writing engraved on tortoise shells and animal bones, the earliest known to be in the Shang Dynasty.

Some ancient texts carved into stones, shells, etc.!

The oracle bone inscription is an ancient Chinese script, also known as "Qiwen", "Oracle Bone Script", "Yinxu Script" or "Tortoiseshell Beast Bone Inscription". It is the earliest mature Chinese character, mainly referring to the characters used by the royal family in the late Shang Dynasty of China to remember things and engraved on tortoise shells or animal bones.

The Shang Dynasty script inherited the original carved symbols and the Western Zhou script, which was the key form of the development of Chinese characters. The modern and mature modern script or regular script gradually evolved from the Shang Dynasty script. In addition to oracle bone inscriptions, Shang script also includes Shang dynasty gold scripts, which are generally more formal than oracle bone inscriptions.

The oracle bone inscription is an ancient Chinese script, also known as the oracle bone, the ancient word qi deficiency script or tortoiseshell animal bone. Wen is the earliest mature Chinese character, mainly referring to the late Shang Dynasty Chinese royal family used records to carve tortoise shells or animal bones.

The oracle bone inscription is the ancestor of modern Chinese characters inscribed on oracle bones in the late 2nd century BCE, animal bones or tortoise shells used for fire divination, and is the earliest known form of Chinese writing. The vast majority, about 150,000 pieces, was unearthed at the Yinxu site in Xiaotun Village, Anyang City, Henan Province. The latest major discovery is the discovery in 1993 of 1,608 pieces from the Huayuanzhuang collection near Xiaotun, of which 579 are inscriptions.

They record the fire divination of the last nine kings of the Shang dynasty, beginning with Wuding, whose accession to the throne has been marked by different scholars as 1250 BC or 1200 BC. After the Shang Dynasty was overthrown by the Zhou Dynasty. In 1046 BC, divination with dense foil became more common, and the oracle bone collections of the Western Zhou period were much smaller.

So far, no Zhou ruins of the same size as Yin Ruins have been found, although oracle bone inscriptions appear to be more common, found near most of the major population centers of the time, and new sites are constantly emerging, being discovered since 2000.

The late Shang oracle bone inscriptions, together with a number of bronze inscriptions of different styles of roughly the same era, constitute the earliest significant corpus of Chinese scripts, which is crucial for the study of Chinese etymology, as Shang scripts originated directly from modern Chinese scripts. It is the oldest known member and ancestor of the Chinese script family, predating the bronze script, and making it the direct ancestor of more than a dozen East Asian writing systems that developed over the next three thousand years, including Chinese and Japanese scripts and syllabic scripts. in current use.

In terms of content, the inscriptions range from the incomplete omen below the cross to the rare more than 100 characters (typical there are several crosses), involving a wide range of subjects, including war, sacrifice, agriculture, etc. Such as the birth, illness and death of the royal family. As such, they provide valuable insights into the civilization and society of the late Shang Dynasty.

What is certain is that the Shang script went through a period of development before the Anyang oracle bone inscription due to its mature nature. For example, many characters have been extensively simplified and linearized, and the process of semantic extension and speech borrowing has apparently been running for some time, at least hundreds of years, perhaps longer. However, there is no large number of recognizable texts from the early or middle Shang period.

The few Neolithic symbols found on pottery, jade, or bones from various cultural sites in China are highly controversial, and there is no consensus that any of them are directly related to Shang oracle bone scripts.

As the name suggests, oracle bone inscription is the text engraved on the shell of a turtle, and the oracle bone inscription is the source of modern Chinese characters. Modern Chinese characters evolved from oracle bone inscriptions.

The oracle bone script is an ancient script and the earliest mature Chinese character, named because it was engraved on a turtle shell.

Oracle is actually writing on bones, and it refers to an American database company.

oracle bone inscriptions。

The oracle bone inscription is an ancient Chinese script, also known as "Qiwen", "Oracle Bone Script", "Yinxu Script" or "Tortoiseshell Beast Bone Inscription". It is the earliest mature Chinese character that we can see, mainly referring to the script engraved on tortoise shell or animal bone used by the royal family for divination in the late Shang Dynasty of China, and is a carrier of the earliest systematic Shang Dynasty script known in China and East Asia.

Oracle Bone Script Features:

Oracle bone inscriptions are words engraved or written on tortoise shells and animal bones. Unearthed in the area of Xiaotun Village, Anyang, Henan, because it was the capital of the Shang King Pangeng to Dixin in the late Shang Dynasty, it was called "Yin" in history. Shang destroyed the country, and then it became a ruin, and later generations took the name of "Yin Ruin".

Therefore, the oracle bone inscription is also called "Yinxu script". The vast majority of its content is the words of royal divination, so it is also called "divination", or "chastity divination words". This kind of writing is basically carved by deeds, also known as "deeds", or "Yin deeds", etc.

The oracle bone inscription has been around for more than 3,000 years, and it is not only the earliest and systematic material for studying the origin of Chinese writing, but also an important wealth for the study of oracle bone calligraphy. From the perspective of calligraphy, the oracle bone inscription has three basic elements of calligraphy: the use of the pen, the knot, and the chapter.

The oracle bone script is an ancient Chinese script, an early form of Chinese characters, sometimes considered one of the scripts of Chinese characters, and the oldest surviving mature script from the Chinese dynastic period. The oracle bone inscription is also known as the "inscription", "oracle bone inscription" or "tortoiseshell beast bone inscription".

The value of the oracle is.

1. Historical value.

The oracle bone inscriptions record and reflect the political and economic conditions of the Shang Dynasty, and mainly refer to the inscriptions on tortoise shells or animal bones used by the royal family for divination in the late Shang Dynasty (14th and 11th centuries BC) in China.

2. Philological value.

After the fall of the Yin Shang Dynasty and the rise of the Zhou Dynasty, the oracle bone inscription was also used for a period of time, and it is the earliest known systematic form of writing in China, which inherits the original carved symbols and the bronze inscriptions below, which is the key form of the development of Chinese characters, and is known as "the earliest Chinese characters". Modern Chinese characters evolved from oracle bone inscriptions.

Oracle bone inscription has an extremely important position in the long history of the development of Chinese characters, and it is well-deserved as the originator of modern Chinese characters. The germination of Chinese characters in China appeared in the carved symbols on pottery shards in the late Neolithic period. However, although these carved characters already have the rudimentary form of words, they are all simple symbols and words, and there is no complete system and rules.

The earliest script that really has a certain system and relatively strict rules is the oracle bone inscription. According to research, there are about 4,500 unrepeating words in the oracle bone inscription, and about 1,700 words have been recognized, and these words are not all the words used at that time. The oracle bone inscription is a valuable resource for the study of paleographies.

3. Economic value.

First, "oracle bone calligraphy" is the calligraphy art of oracle bone inscription.

The so-called "oracle bone calligraphy" has two meanings.

The first refers to the calligraphy works based on the structure and calligraphy characteristics of the oracle bone characters of the Shang and Zhou dynasties, and neatly copied and written. This kind of work can be split by Brother Sui, according to the needs of the collection of ancient characters to combine into new sentences. The content is new, but the words are as elegant as the words written by the Yin people 3,000 years ago.

On the other hand, it refers to modern calligraphy works that borrow the characteristics of oracle bone inscriptions and create their own. They see oracle bones as an inspiration, a little inspiration in their artistic creation, rather than a pursuit of "likeness". Therefore, they did not strictly follow the calligraphic characteristics of the oracle bone inscription, but may have combined the characteristics of various ancient characters such as oracle bone inscription, Jin inscription, and Warring States script.

Although this art of calligraphy is related to paleography, it is not the same as the trend.

Clause. Second, the collection value of oracle bones.

I hope you like it and Cai Panna!

PS: If you have any questions, please keep asking!

by: Know the team [Freehand World].

The Jiapei bone inscription is the main text of the late Shang Dynasty, and the archaeological discovery has a large number of bones with the New Year's greeting, a total of more than 100,000 pieces, the content is mainly the divination record of the Shang royal family, and the family emblem of the tribe of many states can also be seen. The oracle bone inscription has about 4,000 words and reflects the basic composition of the text symbol system.