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Record number of oracle bone characters found in Shaanxi
By Duan Ruolan (China Daily)
Updated: 2009-01-21 18:33

Archaeologists in Northwestern China’sShaanxi province had found record number of readable oracle bone characters after unearthing more than 7,000 pieces of bone and tortoiseshell during a joint excavation carried out between September and December in 2008.

A record number of more than 1,600 words are recognized on 688 pieces of the bones and tortoiseshell inscribed with characters.

The find was made at theTemple of Duke Zhou, a cluster of tombs in Qishan county that dated back to the Western Zhou Dynasty (11th-771 BC).

This had added the total number of oracle characters of the Western Zhou Dynasty to 2,100, Xinhua news agency reported on Wednesday.

The discovery made theTemple of Duke Zhou the site with the most number of oracle bone characters ever unearthed, according to the report.

Among the finds are the characters for “king” (wang), such as “Wang Ji”, “Wen Wang” and “Wang”

Other newly-found characters including war-related names, major kingdoms, sacrifice process and numbers used in astrology.

Prior to the discovery at theTemple of Duke Zhou, less than 1,100 Chinese characters written on pieces of bone and tortoiseshell had been found, Lei Xingshan, head of the dig team, told China Daily in November.