Terracotta Warrior Weapons Shu

Shu is a percussion weapon that probably originated from the stone sticks of primitive society. The name of Shu is a long-handled weapon with the inscription “Shu” unearthed from the tomb of Zeng Houyi in Suixian County, Hubei in 1978. Before that, the archaeological community did not know what kind of weapon it was because of the lack of physical evidence. After the Spring and Autumn and Warring States period, there were two types of bronze shu. One is the one with many long and sharp spines on its head, mainly used for striking. The other one is a kind of ceremonial bamboo with no blade and a cylindrical shape, with more or less different angles on the top. Both have long handles. Shu is not rare in previous weapons, and even rarer in the Qin Dynasty. The excavation of 31 pieces of bronze shu in pit 3 of the Terracotta Army provides the first physical example of shu in the Qin Dynasty.

All of them are ceremonial weapons with cylindrical heads and no sharp edges. Except for one bronze saprolite found in Terracotta Warrior Pit No. 1, the other 30 were excavated in Terracotta Warrior Pit No. 3. Twenty of them were bundled together and placed neatly under the wall. The head of the sap is cylindrical with a triangular cone shape at the top, with a length of 10.5-10.6 cm and a diameter of 2.3 cm-3 cm, and the wooden handle remains more than one meter high. The verses in the Poetic Edda indicate that the Shu was a weapon equipped for the king’s ceremonial guard. One of the reasons why archaeologists judged Terracotta Warrior Pit No. 3 to be a military command was the Shu.

The Song Dynasty used to be very popular with various types of stick weapons, wolf tooth stick, Shaolin stick, etc., which is an extension and development of the Shu. But because of the limitation of the killing power of this weapon, especially after the firearms became popular, it withdrew from the ranks of weapons.

Through literature and archaeological excavations, it can be seen that the bronze shu, as a kind of long striking weapon, appeared in the Shang Dynasty, was popular in the Spring and Autumn and the Warring States, and declined in the Qin and Han Dynasties, but as a ceremonial weapon, it was still used in the Tang and Song Dynasties.