策马优课 《大英博物馆100件文物世界史》双语解读音频（康侯簋）

策马优课将全程语音解读国际著名英语刊物（如《经济学人》、FT等），解析词汇、剖析语法、解读背景、丰富百科知识。无论你是英语爱好者、口笔译学习者，还是正在准备雅思、托福、GRE、考研英语、MTI，都能从中受益！...

亲爱的小伙伴们，欢迎来到全新推出的策马优课——《大英博物馆100件文物世界史》，我们将借助文物视角，通过双语语音解析带你遨游世界历史。

本期，我们介绍的藏品是康侯簋，西周早期的青铜器。康侯簋又名沬司徒迭簋，学界都认为它出自河南浚县辛村卫国贵族墓地，时间在1931年前后，后流落海外，现藏于大英博物馆。



Chinese Zhou Ritual Vessel

Bronze gui, found in western China（1100-1000BC）

How often do you dine with the dead? It may seem a strange question, but if you’re Chinese it may not be quite so surprising, because many Chinese, even now, believe that deceased family members watch over them from the other side of death and can help or hinder their fortunes. When somebody dies they are equipped for burial with all kinds of practical bits and pieces: a toothbrush, money, food, water – or possibly today a credit card and a computer. The Chinese afterlife often sounds depressingly (perhaps reassuringly) like our own. But there is one great difference: in China the dead are paid huge respect. A well-equipped send-off is just the beginning. Ritual feasting – holding banquets with and for the ancestors – has been for centuries a part of Chinese life.

This spectacular bronze vessel, made about 3,000 years ago, is called a gui. Gui often carry inscriptions which are now a key source for Chinese history, and this bronze is just such a document. This one is about the shape and size of a large punch bowl, about a foot (27 centimetres) across, with two large curved handles. There is an elaborate, flower-like decoration on bands at the top and bottom, but its most striking features are undoubtedly its handles, each of which is a large beast, with tusks, horns and huge square ears caught in the act of swallowing a bird whose beak is just emerging from its jaws. The result is a vessel which at that date could have been made nowhere else in the world. The sheer skill, the effort and expense involved in making bronze vessels like these made them immediately objects of the highest value and status, fit therefore for the most solemn rituals.

If you look inside the gui there is a surprise, which makes it into an instrument of power as well as an object of ritual. At the bottom, where it would have normally been hidden by food when in use, there is an inscription in Chinese characters, not unlike those still used today, which tells us that this particular bowl was made for a Zhou warrior, one of the invaders who overthrew the Shang Dynasty. The inscription tells us of a significant battle in the Zhou’s ultimate triumph over the Shang:The King, having subdued the Shang country, charged the Marquis K’ang to convert it into a border territory to be the Wei state. Since Mei Situ Yi had been associated in effecting this change, he made in honour of his late father this sacral vessel.

Gui like this have been found over a wide swathe of China, because the Zhou conquest continued to expand until it covered nearly twice the area of the old Shang kingdom. It was a cumbersome state, with fluctuating levels of territorial control. Nonetheless, the Zhou Dynasty lasted for as long as the Roman Empire, indeed longer than any other dynasty in Chinese history.




词汇整理

策马优课将带领大家学习国际著名英语刊物（包括但不限于经济学人、金融时报 、纽约时报、卫报、时代周刊、华盛顿邮报、纽约客等），解析词汇、剖析语法、解读背景、丰富百科知识。无论你是英语爱好者、口笔译学习者，还是正在准备雅思、托福、考研英语、MTI，都能从中受益。尤其是对MTI的考生，不仅可以夯实英语基础，还可以直击百科知识，一举两得。

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