The bronzes before the pre-Qin Dynasty are very precious, and for any museum, they can be called "treasures of the town museum" level cultural relics. When many people visit bronzes in the museum, they will find that most of the shapes of bronzes are exaggerated, especially the bronzes of animals, and the shape is very strange and special. If you don't read the introduction, it is difficult to see what kind of animal the prototype of the bronze is, such as the "Owl Zun" excavated from the tomb of the woman, its shape is very characteristic and very imaginative.
In the ancient animal shape of the bronze, there are also a small number of realistic style bronze, such a number of bronzes are relatively rare, naturally it is precious and abnormal, each piece can be called a national treasure level cultural relics. For example, in the Hunan Provincial Museum, there is a collection of Shang bronze elephant statues, which is a realistic style bronze elephant statue, which has high artistic and cultural value and is a rare ancient art treasure. The discovery of this artifact is also very interesting, it was accidentally discovered by the villagers while planting trees.
One day in February 1975, Zhang Lilin, a villager in the Lion-shaped Mountain Brigade of Xianxia Commune in Liling County, Hunan Province, carried a bundle of saplings and planned to plant trees on the Lion-shaped Mountain next to the village. When he was digging a pit on the hillside, he accidentally dug out a bronze elephant. At that time, people were relatively simple, and they did not dare to take things for themselves, and the first thing that came to mind was to report to their superiors. Therefore, after Zhang Lilin dug up the elephant, he did not even plant trees, and he carried the elephant and hurried to find the commune cadres stationed in the village.
In the 1960s and 1970s, many national treasure-level cultural relics were unearthed throughout the country, and in order to protect cultural relics, provincial museums also increased their publicity efforts during this period, sending cultural relics protection experts to the streets and alleys to publicize the knowledge of cultural relics protection. After seeing this elephant, the commune cadres of the Lion-shaped Mountain Brigade thought that this thing was very similar to the bronze ware in the propaganda poster "Doing a Good Job in the Protection of Cultural Relics" issued by the Hunan Provincial Museum some time ago.
Bronze ware belonged to the heavy weapon of the country before the pre-Qin Dynasty, and it can be regarded as a national treasure level cultural relics in modern times. Since this elephant may be a bronze vessel, it must be left to the superior to send experts to identify it. So the commune cadres wrote a letter to the Hunan Provincial Museum, saying that the lion-shaped mountain had excavated a cultural relic suspected of bronze ware, and asked the museum to send experts to identify it. The Hunan Provincial Museum attached great importance to it after receiving the letter, and the next day sent experts to the Lion-shaped Mountain.
When the museum's experts arrived in the village, they immediately began to identify the bronze elephant, and the result of the identification was that the artifact was indeed a bronze artifact from the Shang and Zhou dynasties. Although it is impossible to determine whether this cultural relic is from the Shang Dynasty or the Zhou Dynasty, this cultural relic is undoubtedly very precious, and it is the only elephant statue in China with a specific excavation site, which is of great value for the study of bronze craftsmanship and culture in the Shang and Zhou Dynasties.
Although it has been determined that the elephant is a bronze artifact, the consent of the discoverer is required to bring the bronze elephant back to the museum. So the archaeologists who came to the scene advised Zhang Lilin to hand over the cultural relics, because the bronzes are national treasure-level cultural relics, and the private collection of cultural relics is tantamount to breaking the law. Zhang Lilin originally did not intend to hide it privately, so after listening to the opinions of experts, he agreed to hand over the cultural relics to the museum on the spot.
After the bronze elephant statue was transported back to the Hunan Provincial Museum, archaeologists conducted a detailed appraisal, and the specific casting time of this cultural relic was the Shang Dynasty period that preceded the Zhou Dynasty, so it was named "Shang Bronze Elephant Zun". According to the identification of archaeologists, this elephant statue is a wine vessel, 22.8 meters high, 26.5 cm long, the trunk and the abdomen are connected, can be used as a flow mouth, there is an oval mouth on the back, the wine can be injected from here, it is a bronze vessel with both artistic value and practical value.
Moreover, the artistic style of this bronze statue is very realistic, and the caster deliberately shortens the body of the elephant, highlighting the mighty state of the elephant in this ingenious way, making the image of the elephant more realistic. The elephant body is also embellished with dragon, phoenix, tiger, animal face and other ornaments, especially the phoenix and tiger stripes on the elephant trunk, which not only maintains the characteristics of the elephant trunk, but also shapes a phoenix and a tiger, which is a rare artistic treasure.
This ingenious bronze elephant statue is a masterpiece of ancient bronze craftsmanship, which not only shows people the extraordinary achievements in bronze casting technology during the Shang Dynasty, but also confirms that the "merchants serve elephants and abuse Dongyi" recorded in the "Lü's Spring and Autumn" is indeed true. From this cultural relic, it can be seen that the ancients of the Shang Dynasty really knew a lot about the elephant as a land beast, otherwise they would not have been able to forge such a perfect work of art with both form and god.