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Fu Hao
Queen consort
Modern statue of Fu Hao outside her tomb at Yinxu
Died	c. 1200 BC Yinxu, Shang
Spouse	King Wu Ding
Issue	Prince Jie
Dynasty	Shang
Occupation	Military general Priestess

Fu Hao (traditional Chinese: 婦好; simplified Chinese: 妇好; pinyin: Fù Hǎo; lit. 'Lady Hao') died c. 1200 BC, posthumous temple name Mu Xin (母辛), was one of the many wives of King Wu Ding of the Shang dynasty and also served as a military general and high priestess. Minimal evidence detailing Fu Hao's life and military achievements survived the Shang dynasty, and the records may have perished over the course of time.

The Tomb of Fu Hao was unearthed intact in 1976 at Yinxu by archaeologist Zheng Zhenxiang, with treasures - known as her 700+ jade objects (Fu Hao was a collector, so some were already antiques), and also her collection of more than 500 bone objects, such as oracle bones (they were from her role as a religious priestess, and were used in her many rituals). Along with the jade and bone objects, Fu Hao was buried with 6 dogs, and 16 human sacrifices. Inside the pit was evidence of a wooden chamber 5 metres (16 feet) long, 3.5 metres (11 feet) wide and 1.3 metres (4.3 feet) high containing a lacquered wooden coffin that has since completely disintegrated. The tomb of Fu Hao provides the most insight into her life, her relationship with the royal family, and her military role and achievements - as the objects she was buried with provide clues to her activities and interests.

Biography

What is known is that King Wu Ding cultivated the allegiance of neighbouring tribes by marrying one woman from each of them. Fu Hao (who was believed to be one of the king's 64 wives) entered the royal household through such a marriage and took advantage of the semi-matriarchal slave society to rise through the ranks to become one of King Wu Ding's three consorts. She may have come from the border or from the Steppe, as suggested by the assortment of weapons in her tomb.

The other two wives were Fu Jing (婦妌) and Fu Shi (婦嬕). Fu Jing was the primary queen while Fu Hao was the secondary queen. Fu Hao was also the mother of Prince Zu Ji. Oracle bone inscriptions show concern for her well-being at the time of the birth.

The activities of priestess and ritual matters of China only exist in the Shang dynasty, so some evidence is vague. Since each Chinese character like Fu (婦) often has variable meanings, even with the oracle bones of Shang deciphered, it is possible that women like Fu Hao were originally priestesses instead of the king's wives; she just happened to marry the king later. That is to say, the meaning of "wife" in some contexts may actually refer to a position as priestess.

Fu Hao owned her land. According to the oracle bones, she offered the king remarkably valuable tributes many times. Although the Shang king had control over ritual matters, which constituted the most important political activity of the day, oracle bone inscriptions show that Wu Ding repeatedly instructed Fu Hao to conduct the most special rituals and to offer sacrifices to the ancestors. The Shang dynasty had two most important activities: ritual matters and battles; Lady Hao played extraordinary roles in both at that time.

Military role

Fu Hao is known to modern scholars mainly from inscriptions on Shang dynasty oracle bone artifacts unearthed at Yinxu. From these inscriptions and from the presence of weapons in her tomb, it can be determined that Fu Hao was a general in charge of several military campaigns for the Shang dynasty.

In her military role, she was responsible for conquering enemies and neighbours of the Shang dynasty. The Tufang (土方) had fought against the Shang for generations until they were finally defeated by Fu Hao in a single decisive battle. Further campaigns against the neighbouring Yi, Qiang and Ba followed; the latter is particularly remembered for being the earliest recorded large-scale ambush in Chinese history. With up to 13,000 soldiers and important generals Zhi and Hou Gao serving under her, she was the most powerful Shang general of her time.

This highly unusual status is confirmed by the many weapons, including great battle-axes, unearthed in her tomb.

While Fu Hao's achievements were notable and unique, other women in this period were also active in military roles; in a similar manner Fu Jing was also thought to have served in the military based on the presence of many weapons and military equipment in her tomb. Oracle bones also revealed records of at least six hundred women participating in the military during this era.

Tomb

Remarkably, after her death Fu Hao was buried in a tomb on her land across the river from the main royal cemetery, even though usually the royal families were buried together. She died well in advance of King Wu Ding, who constructed her tomb at his capital Yin.

Because of its location, Lady Hao's tomb is the only royal Shang tomb to have been left unnoticed and unlooted, giving unique insights into her life and the burial practices of the time. The King later made many sacrifices there in hopes of receiving her spiritual assistance in defeating the attacking Gong, who threatened to wipe out the Shang completely. This shows his great favor towards Hao and after her death, he had her married to the three greatest kings before him. The tomb was unearthed by archaeologists in 1976 and is now open to the public.

The tomb itself was only a 5.6-by-4-meter (18 by 13 ft) pit that contains a smaller, 5-meter-long (16 ft), 3.5-meter-wide (11 ft), and 1.3-meter-high (4.3 ft) wooden structure within. The inside was packed with burial sacrifices and wealth which signified Lady Hao's prodigious position.

She was buried with a large and varied quantity of weapons signifying her important martial status, since only warriors and generals were buried with such objects. Additionally, Fu Hao was entombed with hundreds of bronze, jade, bone, and stone objects such as figurines, vessels, and mirrors, many of which were rare objects from around the kingdom. These objects are some of the best preserved from that time period. The sacrificial bronze vessels and tortoise shells inscribed prepared by Fu Hao discovered in her tomb are further evidence of her status as a high priestess and oracle caster. As was the custom during the Shang dynasty, Fu Hao was buried with 16 human sacrifices and six dogs. The remains of Fu Hao herself were found to have disintegrated.

Contents of tomb

In total, Fu Hao was buried with:

• 755 jade objects
• 564 bone objects, including nearly 500 bone hairpins and over 20 bone arrowheads
• 468 bronze objects, including 130 weapons, 23 bells, 27 knives, 4 mirrors, and 4 tigers or tiger heads
• 63 stone objects
• 5 ivory objects
• 11 pottery objects
• 7,000 pieces of cowry shell (Shang dynasty currency)
• 16 human sacrifices
• 6 dogs

See also

• Shang dynasty
• Tomb of Fu Hao
• Women in ancient and imperial China

Notes

1. Several scholars (Childs-Johnson (2003), Zhang Zhenglang (1983, 1986), Chung (1985), etc.) propose that 婦好 be read as Fù Zǐ (lit. "Lady Zi"), interpreting the graph 好 as a phono-semantic compound with phonetic 子 and radical 女, which was used "as a heraldic and function and gender classifier" to distinguish women's surnames from men's.
2. Fu Shi can also be called Fu Yi (婦睪), and she is often referred to in the oracle bones as Bigui (妣癸).

References

1. Childs-Johnson, Elizabeth (2003). "Fu Zi: The Shang Woman Warrior". The Fourth International Conference on Chinese Paleography Proceedings. Hong Kong: Chinese University of Hong Kong. pp. 619–651.
2. Ebrey, Patricia (2006). The Cambridge Illustrated History of China. Cambridge University Press. pp. 26–27. ISBN 978-0-521-43519-2.
3. Bagley 1999, pp. 194–196.
4. "The First Lady of Chinese Archaeology". TrowelBlazers. 9 May 2014. Retrieved 18 October 2015.
5. ^ Buckley Ebrey, Patricia. "Shang Tomb of Fu Hao". A Visual Sourcebook of Chinese Civilization. University of Washington. Retrieved August 4, 2007.
6. ^ "Woman General Fu Hao". All China Women's Federation. Archived from the original on February 14, 2007. Retrieved August 4, 2007.
7. Rawson, Jessica (2015). "Steppe Weapons in Ancient China and the Role of Hand-to-hand Combat". 故宮學術季刊 (The National Palace Museum Research Quarterly). 33 (1): 39. The presence of these different weapon types in Fu Hao's tomb has by some been taken as a mark that she came originally from the borders or the steppe, where women were more likely to play a central role in battle. Her status as a leader in war was thus symbolised by the axes, her homeland by the knife.
8. Bunker, Emma C.; Watt, James C. Y.; Sun, Zhixin (2002). Nomadic Art of the Eastern Eurasian Steppes: The Eugene V. Thaw and Other New York Collections (PDF). New York: Metropolitan Museum of Art. p. 76. ISBN 9780300096880.
9. Lin, Meicun (2016). "Seima-Turbino Culture and the Proto-Silk Road". Chinese Cultural Relics. 3 (1–002): 256–257. ISSN 2330-5169. The report on the archaeological excavation of the Yin (Shang) ruins published in 2011 shows a Seima-Turbino style bronze socketed spearhead with a single side hook. (...) It is worth noting that a jade figurine (Figure 15:5) that resembles a Seima-Turbino-style bronze figurine (Figure 15:3) and a knife with deer-head pommel (Figure 15:6) were unearthed from the tomb of Fu Hao at the Yin ruins. A similar knife with deer-head pommel is also in the collection of the Baoji Museum of Bronze Collections (Figure 12:4). These discoveries and collected artifacts reveal the cultural transmission between ancient inhabitants of the Yellow River region and nomads of the Eurasian Steppe.(...) The Illustrious Ancestor disciplines the Devil's Country. After three years he conquers it." (...) Seima-Turbino-style artifacts unearthed at the Yin ruins, including the bronze socketed spearhead with a single side hook, the jade figurine and the knife with deer-head pommel, indicate that the "Devil's Country" refers to the far-away Altai Mountains.
10. Meicun, Lin; Liu, Xiang (October 2017). "The origins of metallurgy in China". Antiquity. 91 (359): e6. doi:10.15184/aqy.2017.177. ISSN 0003-598X.
11. "The Tomb of Lady Fu Hao" (PDF). British Museum. Archived from the original (PDF) on 2016-03-27.
12. Wang, Robin (2003). Images of Women in Chinese Thought and Culture: Writings from the Pre-Qin Period Through the Song Dynasty. Hackett Publishing. ISBN 978-0872206519.
13. Nelson, Sarah M. (2003). Ancient Queens: Archaeological Explorations. Rowman Altamira. ISBN 9780759103467.
14. Nelson, Sarah M.; Rosen-Ayalon, Myriam (2002). In Pursuit of Gender: Worldwide Archaeological Approaches. Rowman Altamira. ISBN 9780759100879.
15. "Fu Hao – Queen and top general of King Wuding of Shang". Color Q World. Retrieved August 4, 2007.
16. Peterson, Barbara Bennett (2016-09-16). Notable Women of China: Shang Dynasty to the Early Twentieth Century. Routledge. ISBN 9781317463726.
17. "FU HAO'S TOMB". depts.washington.edu. Retrieved 2018-10-25.
18. "Ancient China: From the Neolothic Period to the Han Dynasty" (PDF). asianart.org. Retrieved 2022-02-24.
19. Rawson, Jessica (2015). "Steppe Weapons in Ancient China and the Role of Hand-to-hand Combat". 故宮學術季刊 (The National Palace Museum Research Quarterly). 33 (1): 38–39. We can immediately recognise the engagement of the Shang with their neighbours by looking at the nearly two hundred weapons buried with Fu Hao, who, as consort of the powerful Shang king, Wu Ding (c. 1200 BC), is mentioned in oracle bone inscriptions as a leader in battle. In her tomb were large axes (fig. 1a), derived from the shapes of ancient jade examples, standard spearheads and dagger-axes, ge, for an accompanying fighting force, and knives (fig. 1b) similar to those used in the steppe.
20. YANG, BIN (2011). "The Rise and Fall of Cowrie Shells: The Asian Story". Journal of World History. 22 (1): 1–25. doi:10.1353/jwh.2011.0011. JSTOR 23011676. S2CID 162003115.

Sources

• Bagley, Robert (1999). "Shang Dynasty Archaeology". In Loewe, Michael; Shaughnessy, Edward L. (eds.). The Cambridge History of Ancient China: From the Origins of Civilization to 221 BC. London: Cambridge University Press. pp. 124–231. doi:10.1017/CHOL9780521470308.005. ISBN 978-0-521-47030-8.

Further reading

• Allan, Sarah (2008). "Fu Hao". In Smith, Bonnie G. (ed.). The Oxford Encyclopedia Women in World History. Oxford: Oxford University Press. ISBN 978-0-19-514890-9. (subscription required)

• Chinese women in politics
• 13th-century BC Chinese women
• 13th-century BC Chinese people
• 13th-century BC clergy
• Shang dynasty people
• Chinese nobility
• Women in ancient Chinese warfare
• Ancient priestesses
• Chinese female generals
• Deaths in childbirth
• Chinese royal consorts
• 1200s BC deaths