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Ελληνικά09 · PERSON · YIN XU
Fu Hao
An intact tomb alters who can be at the centre
The only intact royal Shang tomb found belonged to a woman of the royal house.
Museum documentation · free public access, no account required.
Reconstruction · Declared visual hypothesis
AI-recreated portrait of Fu Hao. The clothing draws on the historical context of the label; the face, the age represented, the colouring and the details not preserved are interpretive. It is not an authentic photograph nor a scientific facial reconstruction.
Tracekeepers
History and context
The tomb of Fu Hao at Yin Xu remained intact and contained an extraordinary assemblage of bronzes, jades, weapons and other goods. The discovery offers a rare window onto a member of the Shang royal family.
The abundance does not automatically make Fu Hao a modern exception. The oracle bones and the burial allow questions to be formulated about rank and roles, but not a gap-free biography.
The tomb excavated in 1976 remained intact and contained hundreds of bronzes, jades, weapons and other goods. Inscriptions on objects and bones allow it to be linked to Fu Hao.
Her combination of ritual role, property and campaigns is exceptionally documented. Even so, we do not know her thoughts, exact age or a continuous life without gaps.
Evidence and interpretation
Documented fact: UNESCO identifies Fu Hao's tomb as the only tomb of a member of the Shang royal family preserved intact at Yin Xu. Interpretation and caution: The titles, military activities and relationships attributed to Fu Hao must be supported by concrete inscriptions, not only by her grave goods. Expanded documented fact: UNESCO identifies the tomb as the only known intact burial of a member of the Shang royal family at Yin Xu. Expanded interpretation and caution: Not all objects were used personally by Fu Hao and the funerary victims require ethical presentation.
AI-recreated portrait of Fu Hao. The clothing draws on the historical context of the label; the face, the age represented, the colouring and the details not preserved are interpretive. It is not an authentic photograph nor a scientific facial reconstruction.
Catalogue facts
- Narrative date
- c. 13th century BCE
- Location
- Yin Xu/Anyang, Henan, China
- Material
- Bronze, jade, bone, stone and wood
- Context
- Royal elite tomb
- Curatorial reading
- The documented fact and its interpretation appear separately in the evidence block.
- Discovery
- Excavated in 1976
- Conservation
- Intact royal tomb upon discovery
- Documentary coverage
- 3 museum, heritage, primary corpus or research sources for this stop.
A closer look
About 1 min to read · 1 section. Further reading and sources · free access. Editorial review recorded: .
An intact tomb also imposes limits on excavation
The Yinxu record describes a chamber excavated by means of a rectangular shaft some 5.6 by 4 metres at its opening. It included side niches and an earth step near the bottom. The depth placed the lower area below the water table, a circumstance that conditioned its investigation. This datum nuances what it means to find an unlooted grave: the integrity of the deposits allows exceptional associations to be preserved, but the ground conditions still determine which parts can be observed and documented with precision.
Reference images and provenance
No verifiable entrance photograph is preserved for this representation. You may consult its documentation, but we would not present its face as an exact reconstruction.
Additional visual documentation
A cited publication does not establish which image was used to create the character.
Location and territory
LOCATED SITE
Yin Xu/Anyang · ChinaMarker of the late Shang capital.Sources and references
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