Fu+Hao,+Woman+Warrior

=Fu Hao, Woman Warrior= About 3500 years ago in Ancient China, there was a royal lady called Fu Hao who led her troops into battle. Archaeologists have proved that she was in charge of many campaigns and battles, leading thousands of soldiers.

The Strange Story of the 'dragon bones'
Until about a hundred years ago, nobody knew much about the ancient Shang Dynasty in China (c. 1600-c.1045 BC). There were a few inscriptions on some bronze objects but not much else. But then scholars realised that marks on 'dragon bones' were early forms of Chinese writing. These 'dragon bones' were used in traditional Chinese medicine (and were not really //dragon// bones at all, of course), but they were called 'oracle bones' because people thought they could be used to tell the future. Hundreds of these bones are about a royal lady called Fu Hao.

Fu Hao's Tomb
In 1976 Fu Hao's tomb was discovered and inside it were weapons, including axes with her name on them. The archaeologists put this evidence together with the writing on the 'dragon bones' to work out the story of Fu Hao's life.

Fu Hao's Amazing Life
Fu Hao was married to King Wu Ding. He was a great warrior king, but he made peace with the surrounding tribes by marrying one women from each tribe and he ended up with 60 wives. She was smart enough to earn his favour by working in his government and he trusted her to perform special rituals and offer sacrifices, which was very unusual for a woman at that time, anywhere in the world. It was also very unusual for a woman be so powerful and to lead military campaigns. She was in charge of up to 13000 soldiers and was the boss of two generals Zhi and Hou Gao. The Shang had been fighting with the Tu-Fang for ages until Fu Hao defeated them once and for all. Then she won major battles against the Yi, Qiang and Ba tribes, and led the earliest recorded large-scale ambush in Chinese history. King Ding must have been very proud of her because he built a magnificent tomb for her after she died. Her battle-axes and other weapons were buried with her, along with sacrificial bronze vessels and tortoise shells which are marked //prepared by Fu Hao.// This shows that she was a high priestess and could cast oracles (which means that they thought she could tell the future). Fu Hao died about 1200 BC, but her name survives because the Chinese word 'Hao' means 'good'.

[|Chinese Lives, the People Who Made a Civilization], by Victor H. Mair, Sanping Chen and Frances Wood, Thames and Hudson, 2013, ISBN: 9780500251928 Fu Hao, [|Wikipedia]
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