Oracle bone script

Oracle bone script is the earliest known extensive form of Chinese writing, carved on animal bones and turtle shells during the late Shang period. Its inscriptions record divinations and other activities at the Shang royal court.

Shang dynasty: A Chinese dynasty that ruled during the second millennium BCE, with its late period documented by oracle bone inscriptions. The script’s surviving corpus chiefly belongs to the dynasty’s final centuries.
Scapulimancy: A form of divination that interprets cracks produced in prepared animal bones by heat. Oracle bone divination used this broader practice to obtain prognostic cracks.
Wang Yirong: A Qing dynasty scholar credited with recognizing inscribed oracle bones as ancient writing in 1899. His recognition initiated the modern study of the inscriptions.
Shang dynasty chronology: The reconstruction of Shang rulers, reigns, and dates from archaeological and textual evidence. Inscriptional names and sequence help establish the dynasty’s royal order.
Oracle bone script of the Western Zhou: A smaller body of divination inscriptions on bones and shells from the Western Zhou period. Its limited survival contrasts with the extensive late Shang corpus.
Old Chinese: The earliest reconstructable stage of the Chinese language, spoken before and during the first centuries CE. The inscriptions preserve an early stage of the language, though their phonology remains partly uncertain.
Pyromancy: Divination by interpreting patterns produced through fire or heat. Heat applied to prepared bones generated the cracks central to Shang divinations.
Liu E: A Chinese scholar and writer who published an early collection of oracle bone inscriptions in 1903. His collection helped establish the inscriptions as a subject of systematic scholarship.
Shang religion: The religious practices and beliefs of Shang society, including ancestor worship and communication with divine powers. Divination records reveal how the court addressed ancestors and other powers.
Seal script: A family of Chinese calligraphic forms standardized during the Qin dynasty and used in later inscriptions and seals. Its more regular forms show a later stage in the visual history of Chinese writing.

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