Is Oracle Bone Inscriptions a Memory of the World Register?

BEIJING165438+1October 24th, a few days ago, the website of UNESCO announced that the Oracle Bone Inscriptions declared by China passed the evaluation of UNESCO's International Advisory Committee on World Memory Engineering and was successfully selected into the Memory of the World Register.

Memory of the World is the flagship project of UNESCO, which was founded in 1997. Its purpose is to save the aging, damaged and disappeared documentary records around the world, strengthen their protection and utilization, and raise the world's awareness of documentary heritage and its importance. The project is reviewed every two years, and the Nanjing Massacre file declared by China last time was selected as 20 15. By the end of 20 15, ten documents in China had been selected into the memory of the world.

Oracle Bone Inscriptions is the earliest documentary record discovered in China, which was unearthed in the ruins of Yinxu in Anyang, Henan. In the late Shang Dynasty more than 3,000 years ago, it was used for divination and prayer. Thanks to the development of Chinese characters from Oracle Bone Inscriptions to today, the development of Chinese civilization has never stopped, which provides unique and true first-hand information for the study of China's splendid history of civilization and the early formation of the country and society. Oracle Bone Inscriptions is not only the precious cultural heritage of the Chinese nation, but also the spiritual wealth of mankind. Oracle Bone Inscriptions's successful selection into the Memory of the World Register marks the world's high recognition of Oracle Bone Inscriptions's important cultural value and historical significance, and plays an important role in promoting the international community's understanding and understanding of Oracle Bone Inscriptions and the profound and profound Chinese excellent traditional culture; It plays an important role in enhancing the pride of the Chinese nation and enhancing cultural self-confidence.

Approaching Oracle Bone Inscriptions: the oldest mature script ever discovered.

Oracle Bone Inscriptions's discovery was a coincidence. 1899, the epigraphist Wang found similar characters on the Chinese medicine keel he bought back, so he bought all the 12 keels left in the drugstore-fortunately, he was a epigraphist-and verified that this was the Shang Dynasty script, which was called "the father of Oracle Bone Inscriptions" by later generations.

Wang died heroically in the battle to resist Eight-Nation Alliance's entry into Beijing. His collection of more than 1,000 pieces of Oracle bones was collected by his good friend Liu E. Liu E wrote Travel Notes of the Old Handicapped Man and printed and published The Iron Cloud Hides the Turtle, which is the first monograph on Oracle bones in history.

From 1928, when the Institute of History and Linguistics of Academia Sinica officially excavated Yin Ruins (located in Anyang City, Henan Province) to 1937, archaeologists excavated Yin Ruins for 15 times, and nearly 2,500 pieces of Oracle bones were unearthed. After liberation, the Institute of Archaeology of China Academy of Sciences also made many important discoveries.

Oracle Bone Inscriptions's excavation solved the embarrassment of the Shang Dynasty that there were only written records but no physical proof, and revised some details.

Like the "5,000-year history", we usually think that Oracle Bone Inscriptions is the earliest written language, which is inaccurate. It should be said that Oracle Bone Inscriptions is the oldest mature written language found at present. Oracle Bone Inscriptions (including a large number of other cultural relics unearthed together, such as jade, pottery, bronze and so on, represented by Simu Wuding. ) not only confirmed the existence of Shang Dynasty, but also brought great convenience for us to study the history of Shang Dynasty, because Oracle Bone Inscriptions comprehensively recorded all social fields of Shang Dynasty.

In short, Oracle Bone Inscriptions is the divination record of Shang King. At that time, divination was not a superstition we now think. During the Enlightenment, every nation in the world had a ritual of offering sacrifices to heaven and earth and communicating with God. In addition to asking about the worship of ghosts and gods, the Shang king asked about the weather, year, hunting, conquest, transportation, tribute, civil engineering and other matters, and even asked about the auspicious date of birth and good or bad luck. For example, Wang Wuding, the recorder of Oracle Bone Inscriptions, put his wife's health (health is the first female politician and strategist in China history) within three days, which is the first scientific record of the expected date of delivery in the world.

-This passage is taken from What is Oracle Bone Inscriptions/By Ren Huibin/Shaanxi People's Publishing House.

How many words "Oracle Bone Inscriptions" were found?

Lu, an expert in philology and a professor at ludong university College of Literature, said in an interview with People's Daily recently: It is generally believed that up to now, there are about 4,500 to 5,000 unique words found in Oracle Bone Inscriptions (because they are not fully read, so there is no exact number), and it has been recognized that there are about 1000.

The Method and Present Situation of Interpreting Oracle Bone Inscriptions

Lu said that after the discovery of Oracle Bone Inscriptions at the end of19th century, with the joint efforts of several generations of scholars, such as Luo Zhenyu, Wang Guowei and Guo Moruo, the main part of Oracle Bone Inscriptions was verified by comparing the Biography in Shuowen Jiezi with the inscriptions on bronze and Warring States and with ancient documents. Later, for a long time, there were not as many achievements as in the previous period. After the founding of the People's Republic of China, Mr. Yu's textual research was the most important, and only a few dozen people were uncontroversial.

What are the "bottleneck problems" facing Oracle Bone Inscriptions?

In addition to previous research results, there are about 3000 Oracle characters to be deciphered.

Lu Jinyong believes that the "bottleneck" of the current interpretation has the following aspects: First, most of the unknowns are proper nouns such as names and place names, which are inconvenient to confirm because there is no literature reference; Second, there is no big breakthrough in the method, and the old method of explaining difficult words is not enough to make a big difference; Third, the material problem, most researchers can not obtain first-hand information, making the research quite limited.

According to the Beijing Youth Daily, Professor Zhu from the School of History of Nankai University in Tianjin believes that Wang Guowei and other Oracle Bone Inscriptions scholars of the older generation have very high literacy in Chinese studies. When they were studying Oracle Bone Inscriptions, they were in the primary stage of studying Oracle Bone Inscriptions, and they could decipher many common words and easy words. "Oracle Bone Inscriptions, it has not been deciphered today, and it is basically a hard bone, so even deciphering a word is a' tough battle'." He mentioned, for example, that many artifacts used in the Oracle Bone Inscriptions era have now disappeared, so it is difficult for us to identify hieroglyphics from these artifacts today. "For example, the stoves in the Yin and Shang Dynasties may be difficult for people today to recognize when they see the physical objects, and it is even harder to turn them into words."