The ge dagger is the hallmark weapon of the Shang era. This dagger is unusual in that the jade blade is inserted directly into the handle without the rectangular, transitional tang for attachment. Compare, for example, the ge with turquoise-filled bronze handle and tang and jade blade from Anyang, Yinxu Yuqi (The Jades from Yinxu), Beijing, 1982, pl. 17. A series of bronze-handled jade daggers, some with turquoise inlay still intact and with the transitional tang, is in the Winthrop Collection, Fogg Art Museum, illustrated by Salmony, Ancient Chinese Jades, Cambridge, Massachusetts, 1975, nos. 71-81; and others are in the Nelson-Atkins Museum, A Handbook of the Collection, New York, 1993, p. 278: bottom right and in the Minneapolis Institute of Arts, Chinese Jades: Archaic and Modern, Vermont and Japan, 1977, no. 16

The bronze dragon handle and blade of the Sackler piece are clearly Late Shang in date but their mode of joining may be due to a repair in antiquity