Lot 8. Dague cérémonielle en jade calcifié, Ge, Dynastie Shang, ca. 1600-1200 avant J.-C.;Long. 34,3 cm. Estimation: 15,000 — 25,000 €. Lot. Vendu 47,500 €. Photo Sotheby's 2015

la lame lancéolée, légèrement courbée, sur chacune des deux faces longitudinales, le tenon carré à rebords légèrement arqués et plats, le sommet orné de huit menues saillies, chaque côté de la lame divisé par une arête centrale pointue en relief se terminant en une pointe aiguisée, un petit trou percé à la base du tang, de couleur grisâtre avec des taches blanchâtres et plus foncées, la surface couverte d'une matière poudreuse brunâtre, D.W 3022.

Exhibited: Arts de La Chine Ancienne, Musée de l’Orangerie, Paris, 1937, no. 81. 

Note: Jade daggers carved in the form of bronze weapons were added to the repertoire of jade weapons in the early Shang period. Their sizes and extreme thinness suggest that they were made for ceremonial use. Like their bronze counterparts, jade daggers would have been affixed to a wood or bronze haft at right angle to the blade secured by a pin through the hole drilled at the butt of the dagger.

The popularity and importance of jade daggers can be seen by the significant number of examples excavated from the tomb of Fu Hao, ca. 1200 BC, at Anyang, which included 39 examples of various sizes and forms, compare Fu Hao mu, Beijing, 1980, pls. 107-114. Even before the site of the late Shang capital at Anyang was first scientifically excavated in the late 1920s, jades from late Shang contexts were discovered in Anyang and found their way into Western collections formed in the 1920s. Ten related calcified jade daggers similar to the present piece are in the Pillsbury Collection, several are illustrated in Na Chih-Liang, Chinese Jades: Archaic and Modern from the Minneapolis Institute of Arts, Minneapolis, 1977, nos. 1-6.