LATE SHANG - EARLY WESTERN ZHOU DYNASTY, 12TH-11TH CENTURY BC

Bronze lei of this type with cast inscriptions are rare. A much smaller lei bearing the same two-character inscription, reportedly discovered from Anyang, Henan province, formerly in the William Charles White Collection, now in the Royal Ontario Museum, Toronto, is illustrated by Wu Zhenfeng, Shangzhou qingtongqi mingwen ji tuxiang jicheng [Compendium of Inscriptions and Images of Bronzes from Shang and Zhou Dynasties], vol. 25, Shanghai, 2012, no. 13758. For a lei with inscriptions and four other lei without inscription, discovered from the late Shang dynasty hoard in Beidong village, Liaoning province, see 'Liaoning Kazuoxian Beidongcun faxian Yindai qingtongqi' [Yin dynasty bronze discovered in Beidong village, Kazuo county, Liaoning province], Kaogu, no.4, Beijing, pl. 7, fig 1, pl. 6, fig. 3 and pl. 7, figs 2, 3, and 4. Another inscribed lei with two characters in the Sumitomo Collection is published in Sen-Oku Hakuko Kan: Sumitomo Collection [Ancient Art from the Sumitomo collection], Kyoto, 2002, pl. 115; another lei is in the Shaanxi Provincial Museum, illustrated in Zhongguo wenwu jinghua Daquan [Compendium of Chinese bronzes], Taipei, 1993, p. 35, no. 123.