A COLLECTION OF TWENTY- TWO CHINESE ‘ORACLE’ BONES,... Lot n° 1

A COLLECTION OF TWENTY-TWO CHINESE ‘ORACLE’ BONES, SHANG DYNASTY, 13TH - 11TH CENTURY BC 私人珍藏 商代 甲骨 一組 二十二件 公元前 13至11世紀 Short horn water buffalo and Chinese stripe-neck turtle, of various shapes and sizes, twenty-one inscribed with characters, some with cut hollows, burn marks and cracks (22) The largest: 8cm The smallest: 1.5cm Provenance: The collection of Lt. Col. George Douglas Gray, OBE, MD RAMC (1872 - 1946), thence by family descent 来源：乔治.道格拉斯.格雷大校（1872-1946）收藏，家族後人留存至今 The oracle bone inscriptions (jiaguwen: ‘writings on shells and bones’) are the earliest surviving writing systems in China. They were discovered at Anyang, the last capital of the Shang dynasty (c.1300-1046, also known as Yinxu, ‘ruins of the Yin’) at the end of the 19th and early 20th century. One of Lt. Col. Gray’s fellow officers was Capt. James Mellon Menzies (1885-1957) who was originally a Chinese missionary and contributed to the study of the subject, the author of Oracle Records from the Waste of Yin (1919) who was responsible for the discovery that An-yang must be the site of the ancient seat of the Kingdom of Shang. It is conceivable that this group of oracle bones may have been a gift from Capt. Mellon Menzies to Lt. Col. G.D. Gray during their military service together 甲骨文（又称契文、甲骨卜辭，為商朝晚期王室用於占卜記事而在龜甲或獸骨上契刻的文字）中國現存最早的文字系統。它們於 19 世紀末至20 世紀初在商朝最後一個都城安陽（约 为公元前1300-1046 年，又名殷墟）被發現。格雷大校的一位同事是詹姆斯·梅隆·孟席斯上尉（1885-1957），他最初是一名到中国的傳教士，并為該主题的研究做出了贡獻，他同時也是《殷墟中的甲骨文记錄》（1919）的作者，他是第一位推斷出安陽应该就是古代殷商王朝的都城所在地。這组甲骨有很大可能就是梅隆·孟席斯上尉在他们一起服兵役期间送给喬治.道格拉斯.格雷大校的禮物。