LATE SPRING AND AUTUMN PERIOD, FIRST HALF OF THE 6TH CENTURY-476 BC

This finely cast ge features a bird with raised head, large round eyes, hook beak, scaly neck, bifurcated tail, and claws clutching a struggling snake. The bird surmounts a short triangular blade with rounded, sharp edges and an oval receptacle with two holes to fix it onto a wood shaft, remnants of which remain in the opening.

A bronze ge of similar shape and design was unearthed from a late Spring and Autumn burial at Zhongzhou Road, Luoyang (see Wang Ju, ‘Eastern Zhou Tombs at Zhongzhou Middle Road, Luoyang’, Wenwu, 1995.8, p. 11), while a clay mold for casting a ge decorated with a similarly rendered bird, from the site of the foundry at Houma, southern Shanxi province, is illustrated in Shanxisheng Kaogu Yanjiusuo ed., Houma Bronze Casting Site, vol. 1, 1993, p. 95. Other comparable examples include a ge and a zun wine vessel from Jinshengcun, Taiyuan (see Shanxisheng Kaogu Yanjiusuo and Taiyuanshi Wenwu Guanliweiyuanhui ed., Tombs of the Jin State Zhao Ministers at Taiyuan, pp. 90 and 108), as well as clay molds from Houma with the addition of snakes similar to that of the current dagger axe (see Shanxisheng Kaogu Yanjiusuo ed., Houma Bronze Casting Site, vol. I, 1993, p. 240, pl. 131.4).