the wide U-shaped body terminates in an everted rim set with two loop handles and is supported on three cylindrical legs. The vessel is cast with a broad band of nine snakes, filled with heart-shaped scales, against a leiwen ground, beneath a narrow border of C and T decoration. The interior is cast with an inscription of three graphs, reading: Bei Dan Ge. The bronze bears a mellow, silvery patina, heavily encrusted with malachite and some cuprite.

Formerly on loan to the Neiraku Bijutsuan, Nara.

Illustrated: Umehara, Nihon shucho Shina kodo seika, Vol. Three, pl. 179; and Bagley, Shang Ritual Bronzes in the Arthur M. Sackler Collections, fig. 89, p. 91. The inscription is illustrated in Barnard and Cheung, Rubbings and Hard Copies of Bronze Inscriptions in Chinese, Japanese, European, American, and Australasian Collections, Vol. Seven, no. 1310, and see nos. 1312–14 for similar inscriptions on other vessels.

Dan is a place name in Shang texts and Bei Dan is found in inscriptions on oracle bones.

Bagley, op cit, illustrates a fangyi of this same group of Bei Dan Ge vessels as no. 77, pp. 428–35, and discusses the group at length, noting nine vessels, three of which were found in tomb WKGM1 at Wuguancun, Anyang. This tomb was plundered before excavation in 1950 thus allowing the possibility that the remaining bronzes may also have come from there.

For a related ding, see The Institute of Archaeology, CASS, Tomb of Lady Hao at Yinxu in Anyang, pl. X, no. 1.