A 2,600-year-old Chinese tomb containing a rare set of ancient bronze bells is shedding new light on how Zhou dynasty elites used ritual objects to connect with their ancestors and assert political power.
A new study published in the Cambridge Archaeological Journal examines the tomb of Lord Qiu of Zeng, a ruler who governed a small state in present-day northern Hubei, China, between roughly 675 and 625 BC.
Chinglong Tse of the UCL Institute of Archaeology, the study’s sole author, argues that the bells were far more than musical instruments. They served as sacred links between the living and the dead, carrying sounds believed to reach ancestral spirits in another realm.
The bell set, known as the Zeng Gong Qiu bianzhong, was cast around 677 BC. Its inscriptions show that Lord Qiu commissioned the bells to honor two powerful ancestors and invoke their spiritual power against the rival Chu state, which was expanding aggressively across southern China at the time.
Lord Qiu commissioned bells to battle a rival state
The inscriptions also show that Qiu presented himself as a humble “little child” who had not yet earned the virtue of his forebears. This was a standard ritual expression in Zhou culture, meant to show devotion to ancestors and demonstrate worthiness to inherit their authority.
When archaeologists excavated the ancient Chinese tomb, they found the bronze bells scattered in a disordered heap. The wooden rack had been deliberately taken apart, its pieces spread across the burial chamber.
This stood in sharp contrast to how Zhou elites typically buried their bell sets, in careful, patterned arrangements designed to sustain their ritual function in the afterlife.
Tse explains that this deliberate disorder likely reflects a major political shift. At some point during Qiu’s reign, Zeng and Chu ended their rivalry. The Chu king gave his sister in marriage to Lord Qiu, turning the two states from adversaries into allies.
The original purpose of the bells, invoking ancestral power against Chu, had become politically inconvenient.
Bronze bells from a Chinese tomb signal political change
To address this, Qiu’s mourners appear to have intentionally deactivated the bells. They commissioned a new, smaller set of funerary bells, placed in an orderly arrangement and dedicated to the same ancestors, to carry on ancestral rites in the afterlife.
Tse notes that the findings show how ritual objects in the ancient Chinese world were not passive symbols. They held real power to shape relationships between the living, the dead, and their ancestors, and that power could be adjusted when political circumstances demanded it.
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