流失海外近百年，康侯簋终于得以回国“省亲”

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流失海外近百年，康侯簋终于得以回国“省亲”

Original 2017-03-04 陆青松 博物馆丨看展览

每件艺术品都有一个虚构的参照点，在这参照点周围分布着处于完美的均衡状态中的线条、外表和块体。所有这些样式的结构目的都是为了取得和谐，而和谐则使我们的美感得到满足。——里德

中国国家博物馆重磅大展“大英博物馆100件文物中的世界史”已于前日正式开幕，于2017年3月1日在中国国家博物馆隆重开幕。展览自3月2日至5月31日期间，全面向观众开放。

在这次展览中，就有一件来自西周初年的康侯簋，又称“沫司徒疑簋”，它是祭祀祖先的礼器，更是弥足珍贵的青铜重器。

▲康侯簋

自流失海外后，这次是首次“回家”。康侯簋是证明海內卫氏以封国得姓的难得一见的实物资料。

正如我们现在厨房中大小深浅不一的平底锅一样，这件器物应该也是一套不同尺寸的青铜器中的一件。

▲康侯簋

就造型和纹饰而言，《康侯簋》堪称西周早期簋的经典范本。器身高24厘米，口径41厘米，腹壁微弯曲，口沿外侈，近腹底圆曲内收，双半环耳垂长方形饵。

纹饰方面颈和圈足相间排列圆涡纹和四瓣目纹，腹部饰直棱纹，双耳做兽首状，庄重典雅、朴素简约。

由于这种纹饰搭配从西周中期后就基本消失了，因此在康侯簋的这看似简单的造型纹饰搭配中，又多了几分“历史距离”之外的决绝。

▲康侯簋铭文的位置

器物内部虽然只有二十四个字，但是内容很重要，它印证了西周开国的一段历史：周朝的第二代君王——成王讨伐商朝旧贵族的叛乱之后，把原来商朝的都城分封给了卫国的国君——康叔。

▲康侯簋铭文

话说商朝末年，纣王昏庸残暴，残酷剥削奴隶和平民，修建了许多宫殿、园林，终日饮酒和打猎。在他的统治下，百姓苦不堪言。此时，渭水流域的周族在周文王的治理下，国力日渐强盛。

周文王死后，儿子武王姬发即位，决定讨伐纣王，还百姓一个太平盛世。公元前1046年，周武王进攻商的都城朝歌（今河南省淇县）。经过牧野一战，周武王大败商军，推翻了纣王的统治，建立了周朝。

▲武王伐纣

灭商之后，武王分封了纣王的儿子武庚为诸侯，继续统治原来的地方。武王又在武庚的周围，分封了自己的三个弟弟：霍叔、管叔和蔡叔，以达到监视武庚的目的。

可是，武王死后，武庚就联合霍叔、管叔和蔡叔，在东方一些国家的支持下，发动了叛乱。武王的儿子——成王在周公的辅佐下，平定了叛乱，把一些亲戚和功臣分到了一些重要地区作国君，作为自己王朝的屏障。

作为重要战略意义的封地——商朝的旧都朝歌，成王把它分封给了自己的叔叔康侯姬封。此后，姬封以朝歌为中心，建立了卫国。

康侯的大臣——疑，也分到了一块地方。疑备感荣耀，就铸造了这件青铜器，希望得到祖先的护佑。

中国最重要也是最常见的古代宗教仪式，便是为逝者准备祭祀的食物。中国最早的两个王朝——商朝（前1500——前1050）与周朝（前1050——前221），都制作了大量盛放食物和酒水的青铜容器，用于七天一次或者十天一次的大型祭祀活动。

他们相信，如果这些食物酒水准备得当，逝去的祖先便能享用，并会因此保佑子孙后代衣食丰足，当然，我们所看到的的这些青铜器，是极奢华的日常生活用品，并非主要为葬礼准备，但如果某个重要人物去世，人们相信他在死后还是会继续用食物供奉祖先，更确切地说，是以盛宴来取悦他们。——杰西卡·罗森爵士

那么这件器物是怎么发现的呢？

1931年的一天，一场暴雨过后，河南浚县一个叫辛村地方，某村民沿着山坡挖窑洞，突然，一个村民挖出了一件奇怪的东西，仔细一看，是一件周身带着铜锈的青铜器，看起来像个大碗，两侧有两个把手。

村民认为这是一件稀罕物，就兴奋地叫其他人来看，大家一看是青铜器，猜想下面一定是个古墓，于是又挖了起来。果然，地下是一座宝库，大大小小的青铜器、陶器，一件接着一件被挖了出来。辛村挖出了青铜器的消息不胫而走，文物商、古董贩子蜂拥而至，抢购出土的古董。

▲郭宝钧

河南古迹研究会闻讯后，也立刻派人前往，希望制止村民胡乱挖掘墓葬的行为。可是，在他们赶到之前，出土的二十几件文物，早已被文物贩子抢购走了。第二年，在考古学家郭宝钧的主持下，河南古迹研究会又重新发掘辛村古墓，这一片长约500米、宽约300米的墓地，共发掘出了80多座墓葬。

根据墓葬的规模和出土青铜器的铭文判断，这个墓葬群，竟然就是西周时历任卫侯的墓地。可惜的是，这些墓葬大多都已被盗，墓葬中的随葬品也所剩无己。许多珍贵的器物早已被文物贩子卖到了文物市场上，还有一些辗转被卖到了国外，珍贵的康侯簋就这样流失到了海外，并于1977年被大英博物馆收购。

没看够的话，小编再贴心地奉上BBC广播对于康侯簋的解说。

PS……

全英文的……

Chinese Zhou ritual vessel

(made around 1050 BC).

Bronze gui,

found in western China

How often do you dine with the dead? It may seem a strange question, but if you're Chinese it may not be quite so surprising, because many Chinese, even today, believe that deceased family members watch over them from the other side of death, and can help or hinder their fortunes. When somebody dies, they're equipped for burial with all kinds of practical bits and pieces: a toothbrush for instance - money, food, water - possibly a credit card and a computer. The Chinese afterlife often sounds depressingly (or perhaps I mean reassuringly?) like our own. But there is one great difference: the dead are paid huge respect. A well equipped send-off is just the beginning: ritual feasting - holding banquets with and for the ancestors - has been for centuries a part of Chinese life.

"The primary and most ancient religion in China consists of preparing ceremonial meals for the dead." (Jessica Rawson)

"In Chinese way it's ritual, particularly of banquets, offering your ancestor food." (Wang Tao)

Today's programme is about a spectacular bronze bowl, which around three thousand years ago was used for feasting in the company of both the ancestors and the gods. Families offered food and drink to their watchful dead, while governments offered to the mighty gods. This is a vessel that addresses the next world, but emphatically asserts authority in this one, and around 1000 BC, at a troubled transitional moment for China, the link between heavenly and earthly authority was all.

From the Mediterranean to the Pacific, around three thousand years ago, existing societies collapsed and were replaced by new powers. In China the Shang Dynasty, which had been in power for over 500 years, was toppled by a new dynasty, the Zhou. The Zhou came from the west - from the steppes of central Asia. Like the Kushites of Sudan who conquered Egypt at roughly the same time, the Zhou were a people from the edge, who challenged and overthrew the old-established, prosperous centre. The Zhou ultimately took over the entire Shang kingdom and, again like the Kushites, followed it up by appropriating not just the state they'd conquered but its history, imagery and rituals. Central to the ritual of Chinese political authority was the practice of elaborate feasting with the dead, and this involved magnificent bronze vessels, which are both instruments of power and major historical documents.

I'm in the Asia gallery of the British Museum, and I'm with a handsome bronze vessel called a gui. It is about the shape and size of a large punch bowl, about a foot (30 cm) across, with two large curved handles. What you first notice I think, looking at the outside, is the elaborate, flower-like decoration that run on bands on the top and the bottom; but undoubtedly it's the handles that really are the most striking element, because each handle is a large beast, with tusks and horns and huge square ears, and it's caught in the act of swallowing a bird whose beak is just emerging from its jaws. Bronze vessels like this one are among the most iconic objects made in ancient China. They often carry inscriptions which are now a key source for Chinese history, and this bronze, made about 1000 BC, is just such a document. It's part of the story about the end of one Chinese dynasty - the Shang - and the beginning of another one - the Zhou.

The Shang Dynasty had seen the growth of China's first large cities. Their last capital, at Anyang on the Yellow River in north China, covered an area of 30 square kilometres and had a population of 120,000 - at the time it must have been one of the largest cities in the world. Life in Shang cities was highly regulated, with 12-month calendars, decimal measurement, conscription and centralised taxes. As centres of wealth, the cities were also places of outstanding artistic production in ceramics and jade and, above all, in bronze, and all these skills continued to flourish after the Shang had been replaced by the victorious Zhou.

Now making a bro 52 30650 52 15989 0 0 2277 0 0:00:13 0:00:07 0:00:06 3332nze vessel like our gui bowl is an extraordinarily complicated business. First you need to mine and smelt the ores that contain both copper and tin, in order to make the bronze itself. Then comes the casting, and here Chinese technology led the world. Our gui was not made as a single object, but as separate pieces cast in different moulds which were then joined together to make one complex and intricate work of art. The result is a vessel that at that date could have been made nowhere else in the world.

The sheer skill, the effort and expense involved in making bronze vessels like these make them immediately objects of the highest value and status, fit therefore for the most solemn ceremonies. Here's Dame Jessica Rawson, renowned expert on Chinese bronze:

"The first dynasties of China, the Shang and the Zhou, made large numbers of fine bronze containers for food, for alcohol, for water, and used these in a big ceremony, sometimes once a week, maybe once every ten days. The belief is that if food, wine or alcohol is properly prepared, it will be received by the dead and nourish them, and those dead, the ancestors, will look after their descendants in return for this nourishment. The bronze vessels which we see today were prized possessions for use in life. They were not made primarily for burial, but when a major figure of the elite died, it was believed that he would carry on offering ceremonies of food and wine to his ancestors in the afterlife, indeed, entertain them at banquets."

Our bowl would have been one of a set of vessels of different sizes, rather like a set of saucepans in a smart modern kitchen - although we don't know how many companions it might once have had. Each vessel had a clearly defined role in the preparing and serving of food at the regular banquets that were organised for the dead.

If you look inside our basin, there is a surprise. At the bottom, where it would have normally been hidden by food when in use, there is an inscription written in Chinese characters, that are not so unlike the ones still used today. And this inscription tells us that this particular bowl was made for a Zhou warrior, one of the invaders who overthrew the Shang Dynasty.

At this date, any formal writing is prestigious, but writing in bronze carries a very particular authority. The inscription at the bottom of the gui tells us of a significant battle in the Zhou's ultimate triumph over the Shang:

"The King, having subdued the Shang country, charged the Marquis Kang to convert it into a border territory to be the Wei state. Since Mei Situ Yi had been associated in effecting this change, he made in honour of his late father this sacral vessel."

So the man who commissioned the gui, Mei Situ Yi, did so in order to honour his dead father, and at the same time, as a loyal Zhou, he chose to commemorate the quashing of a Shang rebellion in about 1050 BC by the Zhou king's brother, the Marquis K'ang. It's through inscriptions in bronze like this one that we can reconstruct the continued tussling between the Shang and the Zhou throughout this period. As writing on bamboo or wood has perished, these bronze inscriptions are now our principal historical source.

It's not at all clear why the smaller and much less technically sophisticated Zhou were able to defeat the powerful and well organised Shang state. They seem to have had a striking ability to absorb and to shape allies into a coherent attacking force; but above all, they were buoyed up by their faith in themselves as a chosen people. In first capturing, and then ruling, the Shang kingdom, they saw themselves - as so many conquering forces do - as enacting the will of the gods. So they fought with the confidence born of knowing that they were to be the rightful inheritors of the land. But - and this was new - they articulated this belief in the form of one controlling concept, which was to become a central idea in Chinese political history.

The Zhou are the first to formalise the idea of the Mandate of Heaven: the Chinese notion that heaven blesses and sustains the authority of a just ruler. An impious and incompetent ruler would displease the gods, who would withdraw their mandate from him. So on this view, it followed that the defeated Shang must have lost the Mandate of Heaven, which had passed to the virtuous, victorious Zhou. From this time on, the Mandate of Heaven became a permanent feature of Chinese political life, underpinning the authority of rulers or justifying their removal, as Wang Tao, archaeologist at the University of London tells us:

"That transformed the Zhou, because that allowed them to rule other people. If you kill the king or senior member of the family, it's the biggest crime you could make. So to turn the crime against authority or against a ruler into some justifiable action, you had to have an excuse, and that excuse is the Mandate of Heaven.

"Here in the west, we have the concept of democracy, and in China it's the Mandate of Heaven. For example, you can see if you offend the heaven, or offend the people, then you will see the omens from heaven - thunder, rain, earthquake. That's why every single time that China has an earthquake, the political rulers were scared, because they were reading that as some kind of Mandate of Heaven."

So the Zhou's ritual feasting with vessels like our gui was in part a public assertion that the gods endorsed the new regime. Gui such as ours have been found over a wide swathe of China, because the Zhou conquest continued to expand until it covered nearly twice the area of the old Shang kingdom. It was a cumbersome state, with fluctuating levels of territorial control. But nonetheless, the Zhou Dynasty lasted for as long as the Roman Empire, and indeed longer than any other dynasty in Chinese history.

And as well as the Mandate of Heaven, they bequeathed one other enduring concept to China. It was the Zhou, who three thousand years ago gave to their lands the name of Zhongguo: the Middle Kingdom'. And the Chinese have thought of themselves as the Middle Kingdom, placed in the very centre of the world, ever since.

展览信息

大英博物馆100件文物中的世界史

开馆时间:9:00 — 17:00（15:30止票，16:00停止入馆，16:30清场，17:00闭馆）周一为闭馆日

展期：2017/3/2 —5/31

地点：国家博物馆北10展厅

票价：50元

门票获取：①提前预约或凭有效身份证件现场领票获取国家博物馆免费参观券；②入馆后在“大英博物馆100件文物中的世界史”展厅门口购票参观；③更多详情参见国家博物馆官网www.chnmuseum.cn

PS:展览禁止拍照

作者简介：陆青松，北京大学历史系博士，目前供职于吴江博物馆，曾参与撰写文博亲子类图书《博物馆里的中国》。

【参考资料】尼尔·麦格雷戈《大英博物馆世界简史（上）》、里德著作《艺术的真谛》，展品图片由拿破破拍摄，并获得授权。

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