# Sword of King Goujian of Yue > Yue-state royal bronze workshop (maker unrecorded) - c. 496-465 BCE, during Goujian's reign as King of Yue > Canonical HTML: https://iconotheca.com/artworks/yue-state-bronze-workshop/sword-of-goujian-hubei-museum/ > Published by Servola Systems GmbH. Last verified: 2026-08-19 ## Tombstone - **Artist:** Yue-state royal bronze workshop (maker unrecorded) - **Date:** c. 496-465 BCE, during Goujian's reign as King of Yue - **Medium:** Cast bronze (copper-tin alloy, with trace lead and iron), hilt inlaid with glass and turquoise, bird-script inscription near the guard, silk-wrapped grip, pommel cast with eleven concentric rings; found inside a black-lacquered wood scabbard - **Dimensions:** Overall length c. 55.6-55.7 cm (sources vary by a millimetre); hilt length 8.4 cm; blade width 4.6-5 cm (sources vary); weight 875 g - **Object type:** Arms and armour - **Period:** Chinese, Spring and Autumn period (object date); burial context dated to the Warring States period - **Current location:** Hubei Provincial Museum, Wuhan, Hubei, China - **Attribution:** accepted ## Summary A bronze short sword, 55.6 to 55.7 cm long, inscribed in bird-worm script with the name of Goujian, King of Yue (r. c. 496-465 BCE), the ruler remembered for enduring years of hardship after defeat before eventually reversing it. Excavated in December 1965 from Wangshan Tomb No. 1 near Jiangling, Hubei, a burial belonging not to a king of Yue but to a Chu courtier named Shao Gu, and recovered still bright and essentially untarnished after roughly two thousand four hundred years underground.Reading the inscription took Chinese epigraphers, including Guo Moruo and Tang Lan, more than two months of correspondence in 1965-1966 to resolve against a rival candidate reading. How the sword passed from Yue royal ownership into a Chu tomb remains a live question, argued between a marriage-dowry theory and a war-trophy theory, neither documented by a contemporary written source. Its resistance to corrosion is equally unsettled: an early chromium-treatment claim has been tested and rejected, but the sources consulted for this record directly disagree over whether a deliberate sulfide surface treatment or simply the sealed, oxygen-poor burial environment explains the rest.Damaged once, by a 0.7 cm scratch during a 1994 loan to Singapore, the sword has not left China since and was placed in 2013 on the country's list of relics forbidden from exhibition abroad. It remains on permanent display at the Hubei Provincial Museum in Wuhan, and its fame runs well beyond specialist circles: in 2026 an airport in the same province issued a security notice naming souvenir replicas of the sword specifically among items too large to carry aboard a flight. ## Provenance Every link carries a grade. `documented` means a cited source supports it, `disputed` means the identification is argued but not established, `unknown` means we have no owner for that span and have not bridged it. - **c. 496-465 BCE** Goujian, King of Yue `[documented]` (manufacture and personal ownership) Ownership is established by the sword's own eight-character inscription, deciphered by consensus among Chinese epigraphers in 1965-1966 after a documented dispute over the reading of the king's personal name. - **c. 465 BCE-before ownership by Shao Gu** Unknown; possibly the Chu royal house `[unknown]` (gap and transfer) How the sword passed from Yue royal ownership into the possession of a Chu courtier is not documented by any contemporary written source located for this record. Two reconstructions circulate - transfer as part of a marriage dowry when Goujian's daughter married into the Chu royal house, or seizure as a war trophy during Chu's conquest of Yue in the 300s BCE - and neither has documented contemporary support tying it specifically to this object. - **unknown-unknown (burial)** Shao Gu, a Chu courtier of dafu rank, great-grandson of a Chu king `[disputed]` (ownership and burial) Identified as the tomb's occupant via inscribed bamboo strips recovered from the same burial, according to Chinese museum and popular sources; this record has not verified the identification against the original excavation site report and grades it disputed on sourcing grounds, not because a rival identification has been proposed. - **burial-December 1965** Interred, undisturbed `[documented]` (burial and concealment) The sword remained in Wangshan Tomb No. 1, inside its lacquered scabbard, from burial until its 1965 excavation. - **December 1965-April 1999** Chinese state cultural-heritage authorities `[documented]` (excavation, study, and unexhibited custody) Excavated by a Hubei archaeological team as part of survey work ahead of the Zhanghe reservoir irrigation canal. The sword was studied and identified in 1965-1966 but was kept without public display for roughly three decades; the specific custodial institution during that interval is not stated in the sources consulted (see open questions). - **April 1999-present** Hubei Provincial Museum, Wuhan `[documented]` (public exhibition and permanent collection) Shown briefly in Beijing in April 1999 ahead of the fiftieth anniversary of the People's Republic, then installed in the Hubei Provincial Museum's galleries in Wuhan after National Day 1999, where it remains the museum's most prominent object. Damaged by a 0.7 cm scratch during a 1994 loan to Singapore (prior to this final custody phase); placed on China's list of cultural relics forbidden from exhibition abroad on 19 August 2013. ## Open questions - Whether Wangshan Tomb No. 1 was sealed under the reign of King Zhao of Chu or King Huai of Chu bears directly on which of the two competing theories (marriage dowry versus war trophy) is more plausible, and this record has not found the tomb's dating treated as settled in the sources consulted. - Whether the sword's own surface metal has ever been directly examined with modern SEM/EDS methods, of the kind applied to the related but different broken sword fragment by Xie et al. in 2022, or whether the widely repeated composition figures for this specific sword still rest on an older, less precisely sourced analysis this record could not verify against a primary publication. - Whether the dark diamond-pattern surface treatment is the product of a genuine deliberate ancient sulfide process, as popular accounts describe, or is instead, as argued by Hou Dejun, an artefact of burial contamination with no intentional surface chemistry involved - the two accounts in this record's sources directly contradict each other and neither has been shown to be authoritative. - Exactly where and in whose institutional custody the sword was kept for the roughly three decades between its December 1965 excavation and its first public exhibition, in Beijing in April 1999, is not stated in any source consulted for this record. - Whether mainstream Chinese archaeology treats either the marriage-dowry or the war-trophy explanation for the sword's presence in a Chu tomb as more than a plausible reconstruction, or whether both remain openly competing, unresolved hypotheses in the specialist literature this record could not access directly. - The identity of the tomb's occupant, Shao Gu, and his documented relationship to the Chu royal house rest in this record on Chinese popular and museum secondary sources; the original Wangshan excavation site report has not been consulted and would be the appropriate primary source to verify this against. ## Sources - [1] Hubei Provincial Museum, official collection page for the Sword of Goujian ('Sword of Goujian'). - [2] Wikipedia, 'Sword of Goujian.' Tertiary source, consolidating excavation, dimension, inscription and exhibition-history claims; flagged for replacement with the original Wangshan excavation site report and primary metallurgical publications where those claims are load-bearing. - [3] Wikipedia (Chinese), 'Sword of Goujian' (Yuewang Goujian Jian). Tertiary source, flagged for replacement, used here for the identification-dispute names and the marriage/war-trophy theory summary. - [4] Xie, Chi; Fu, Chunlin; Li, Sishi; Liao, Lingmin; Chen, Guantao; Pan, Chunxu. 'A Special Ancient Bronze Sword and Its Possible Manufacturing Technique from Materials Science Analysis.' Materials (Basel), 15(7): 2491, 28 March 2022. Peer-reviewed. Studies a different bronze sword fragment from the same 1965 Wangshan/Shazhong Chu tomb group, not the Sword of Goujian itself. - [5] Milburn, Olivia. 'The Weapons of Kings: A New Perspective on Southern Sword Legends in Early China.' Journal of the American Oriental Society, 128(3): 423-437, 2008. Peer-reviewed academic source on swords as royal regalia and grave-goods among the kings of Wu and Yue; accessed for this record via its published abstract and secondary listing rather than the full journal text. - [6] China News Service, 'Investigating the mystery of the Sword of Goujian: who is the King of Yue named in the eight-character inscription,' 8 December 2016. Covers the Fang Zhuangyou / Guo Moruo / Tang Lan identification dispute. - [7] National Museum of China, '"King Fuchai of Wu" Bronze Sword.' Used here for version-safety comparanda distinguishing the Sword of Goujian from inscribed weapons of King Fuchai of Wu. - [8] South China Morning Post, 'How China's "Excalibur of the East" souvenir swords sparked airport security warning,' 2026. - [9] People's Daily Online, 'Scientists work to uncover the story behind a legendary sword,' 17 January 2018. Names Jiang Xudong, deputy director of the Hubei Provincial Museum's Culture and History Center, and references the CCTV 'National Treasure' documentary series. - [10] China Corrosion and Protection industry portal (corrdata.org.cn), '2500-year unrusted Sword of Goujian: what materials and techniques were actually used?,' 8 March 2016. Attributes the sceptical, environment-only corrosion-resistance account to Hou Dejun, a research fellow associated with the Hubei Provincial Museum and Hubei's archaeological institute. - [11] NetEase (163.com), popular-science article on why the Sword of Goujian has not rusted for 2500 years, covering the chromium-plating claim and its rejection, and the copper-sulfide protective-layer account. Tertiary, flagged for replacement with a primary metallurgical source. - [12] Baidu Tashuo, article on why the Sword of Goujian was found in a Chu noble's tomb, including the identification of the tomb occupant as Shao Gu. Tertiary popular source, flagged for replacement with the original Wangshan excavation site report. --- Images on this record are public domain or CC0 and are hosted by us. No image on this site is generated or simulated. If you quote this record, quote the provenance grades with it.