Ritual vessel in the shape of a rhinoceros

Surviving Rhinos

Only two bronze rhinoceroses are known to have survived from ancient China. (Similar bronze animals are shown on the wall projection.) The fantasy of the sacred rhinoceros continued in China for more than two thousand years. Artisans continued to make rhino-formed ritual vessels. Many were crafted with features like those of a deer or horse, but were still recorded in historical documents as a “rhinoceros vessel” or simply a mythical creature. The rhino shown at right from the early Western Han period (approx. 206–200 BCE) is a rare example of a vessel crafted true to the animal’s features.

小臣艅尊 商晚期 青銅 1843年 山東壽張縣梁山出土
Ritual vessel in the shape of a rhinoceros
Probably 1100–1050 BCE
China; unearthed in Liangshan, Shandong province
Shang dynasty (approx. 1600–1050 BCE)
Bronze
The Avery Brundage Collection, B60B1+
The only known surviving bronze rhinoceros from the Shang dynasty.

錯金銀雲紋犀尊 西漢 青銅 1963年陝西興平縣出土
Ritual vessel in the shape of a rhinoceros
China
Western (Former) Han period (206 BCE–9 CE)
Bronze with inlays of gold and silver
National Museum of China, Beijing

A later bronze in the shape of a rhinoceros.

Rhinoceroses in Ancient China

Can you imagine what rhinoceroses that lived three thousand years ago looked like? The vessel on display in this gallery depicts a two-horned Sumatran rhino that existed in ancient China and can also be found in a wide area of Southeast Asia. The fact that rhinoceroses lived in ancient China was confirmed in 1949, based on scientific analyses of the rhinoceros bones excavated in central China in the city of Anyang, where an archaeological site has yielded remains dating to the Shang dynasty (approx. 1600–1050 BCE).

Early Chinese texts carved on ox bones and turtle shells used in divination during the Shang dynasty, known as oracle bones, mention rhinoceros hunts. Evidently capturing rhinoceroses and sacrificing them during rituals was a significant state event during the Bronze Age (approx. 2000–500 BCE). To successfully complete the king’s commission of this bronze sculpture, the craftsmen may have been shown an actual rhinoceros for study.