{"id":586220,"date":"2026-07-15T02:39:11","date_gmt":"2026-07-15T02:39:11","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/586220\/"},"modified":"2026-07-15T02:39:11","modified_gmt":"2026-07-15T02:39:11","slug":"ancient-chinese-lord-buried-with-bells-meant-to-silence-ancestral-war-rituals","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/586220\/","title":{"rendered":"Ancient Chinese lord buried with bells meant to silence ancestral war rituals"},"content":{"rendered":"<p datatype=\"p\" data-qa=\"Component-Component\" class=\"e8zc9q40 css-1c6uqr6 ec74h0k1\">Imagine, for a moment, that you lived in ancient China, with a rival state threatening your people\u2019s very existence. In the quest for any advantage, one strategy might involve performing a ceremony to invoke assistance from the ancestors.<\/p>\n<p datatype=\"p\" data-qa=\"Component-Component\" class=\"e8zc9q40 css-1c6uqr6 ec74h0k1\">However, life and politics are not static; old rivals can transform into close allies. This transformation raises an intriguing question: do ancient war ceremonies simply fade away when they lose relevance? A recent discovery in China indicates that, at least during the Zhou dynasty (1046\u2013256 BC), people believed the answer was \u201cno,\u201d suggesting that old ceremonies needed to be \u201cturned off.\u201d<\/p>\n<p datatype=\"p\" data-qa=\"Component-Component\" class=\"e8zc9q40 css-1c6uqr6 ec74h0k1\">The research, published by Cambridge University Press, indicates that individuals \u2013 excluding thieves \u2013 had intentionally tampered with the resting place of Lord Qiu, a member of the political elite from the state of Zeng.<\/p>\n<p datatype=\"p\" data-qa=\"Component-Component\" class=\"e8zc9q40 css-1c6uqr6 ec74h0k1\">Chinglong Tse, the study\u2019s author and a PhD candidate at the Institute of Archaeology, University College London, posited that these intruders likely sought to \u201cturn off\u201d a connection to ancient ancestors established by Qiu, which had become politically inconvenient amid shifting social dynamics.<\/p>\n<p><img decoding=\"async\" alt=\"These authentic, 2,600-year-old bronze bells are ritual artefacts excavated directly from the tomb of Lord Qiu of Zeng. Photo: Cambridge University Press\" data-qa=\"BaseImage-handleRenderImage-StyledImage\" class=\"e1gf69pb2 css-6ikqhs e445x7d0\" loading=\"lazy\" src=\"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/07\/5ea0451a-4f41-47cc-a89f-f7b7d8e2b524_262e0592.jpg\" title=\"These authentic, 2,600-year-old bronze bells are ritual artefacts excavated directly from the tomb of Lord Qiu of Zeng. Photo: Cambridge University Press\"\/>These authentic, 2,600-year-old bronze bells are ritual artefacts excavated directly from the tomb of Lord Qiu of Zeng. Photo: Cambridge University Press<\/p>\n<p datatype=\"p\" data-qa=\"Component-Component\" class=\"e8zc9q40 css-1c6uqr6 ec74h0k1\">\u201cIt mattered a lot whether particular ceremonial instruments coupled with the dead because it determined which kind of ritual capacities the mourners wanted the deceased to sustain in his\/her afterlife,\u201d Tse stated.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Imagine, for a moment, that you lived in ancient China, with a rival state threatening your people\u2019s very&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":586221,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_share_on_mastodon":"0"},"categories":[77],"tags":[222310,222309,248878,166062,21317,248877,97241,248876,248885,381,5214,248882,248881,18,144854,51399,19,248886,17,43319,248880,4586,139270,112960,16686,133,21351,66369,248884,22553,1545,248883,248879],"class_list":["post-586220","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-science","tag-ancestor","tag-ancestors","tag-ancestral-war","tag-ancient-china","tag-battle","tag-bells","tag-burial","tag-burial-ritual","tag-cambridge-university-press","tag-china","tag-chinese","tag-chinglong-tse","tag-chu-state","tag-eire","tag-enemies","tag-fight","tag-ie","tag-institute-of-archaeology","tag-ireland","tag-lord","tag-lord-qiu","tag-protection","tag-ritual","tag-rituals","tag-royalty","tag-science","tag-scmp","tag-silence","tag-tomb","tag-university-college-london","tag-war","tag-zeng","tag-zhou-dynasty"],"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@ie\/116921681705817493","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/586220","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=586220"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/586220\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/586221"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=586220"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=586220"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=586220"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}