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Three thousand years ago
"Gatekeeper"
Yikes
person
guard
door
ding
We all know that Baoji is the famous land of bronzes, so among these many bronzes, how many things have you never forgotten? Today I will take you to understand such a bronze and listen to the story behind it.
This artifact is the Jianren Shoumending that I want to introduce to you today, which was excavated in 1988 in the Baoji Rujiazhuang Yuguo Cemetery, the overall design is unique, and it is an extremely rare instrument shape among China's bronzes.
Its overall shape is a rectangular shape, divided into two layers, the upper layer is used to hold food, the lower layer is used to hold charcoal, which can keep the food in the Ding at a certain temperature; the bottom layer also has a cross-shaped skeleton, which can play a role in ventilation and combustion, so it is a piece of Wending that belongs to the Western Zhou Dynasty, in fact, this utensil is also the form of what we now call hot pot. The surrounding area of Ding is also decorated with a lot of animal ornaments, which are very vivid images, the most eye-catching is the doorway on the right, and there is also a slave who has been tortured and lost his left foot. This is the true portrayal of the execution in the Western Zhou Dynasty, which is a kind of torture in ancient China, which refers to cutting off the left foot, right foot or both feet of the punished person, so why let the person who was executed go to the gatekeeper?
This is actually in the "Zhou Li. In the Qiu Guan, there are already relevant records, "Zhou Li. The Qiu Guan records that "mo makes the gatekeeper, the swordsman makes the guard, the palace keeps the inside, the slasher makes the guard, and the beard makes the guard", then the person who was tortured is the garden where the nobles in the Western Zhou Dynasty looked at the garden of rare birds and beasts, and this swordkeeper gatekeeper is like a garden of nobles, and the animals with different forms on it are the rare birds and beasts raised in the garden. The appearance of this piece of Ding precisely confirms the "slasher makes the prisoner" contained in the history books, confirms the cruelty of the execution, and also truly reflects the tragic life of the people at the bottom of the slave-owning society for us.
The ancients used this form of legal report to educate the rest of the commoners and slaves to abide by discipline and law, and it was also a physical material for us to study the social system and criminal law system of the Western Zhou Dynasty. It can be said that it is an artistic treasure that integrates practicality, artistry, warning and education!
Editor: Teng Xiaohua
Editor-in-charge: Zhai Huiping
Review: Kang Junjian