The still existing fragments of writing of this period are found almost exclusively on tortoiseshells or on other bony surfaces, and they represent oracles.  As early as in the Lung-shan culture there was divination by means of “oracle bones”, at first without written characters.  In the earliest period any bones of animals (especially shoulder-bones) were used; later only tortoiseshell.  For the purpose of the oracle a depression was burnt in the shell so that cracks were formed on the other side, and the future was foretold from their direction.  Subsequently particular questions were scratched on the shells, and the answers to them; these are the documents that have come down to us.  In Anyang tens of thousands of these oracle bones with inscriptions have been found.  The custom of asking the oracle and of writing the answers on the bones spread over the borders of the Shang state and continued in some areas after the end of the dynasty.

The bronze vessels of later times often bear long inscriptions, but those of the Shang period have only very brief texts.  On the other hand, they are ornamented with pictures, as yet largely unintelligible, of countless deities, especially in the shape of animals or birds—­pictures that demand interpretation.  The principal form on these bronzes is that of the so-called T’ao-t’ieh, a hybrid with the head of a water-buffalo and tiger’s teeth.

The Shang period had a religion with many nature deities, especially deities of fertility.  There was no systematized pantheon, different deities being revered in each locality, often under the most varied names.  These various deities were, however, similar in character, and later it occurred often that many of them were combined by the priests into a single god.  The composite deities thus formed were officially worshipped.  Their primeval forms lived on, however, especially in the villages, many centuries longer than the Shang dynasty.  The sacrifices associated with them became popular festivals, and so these gods or their successors were saved from oblivion; some of them have lived on in popular religion to the present day.  The supreme god of the official worship was called Shang Ti; he was a god of vegetation who guided all growth and birth and was later conceived as a forefather of the races of mankind.  The earth was represented as a mother goddess, who bore the plants and animals procreated by Shang Ti.  In some parts of the Shang realm the two were conceived as a married couple who later were parted by one of their children.  The husband went to heaven, and the rain is the male seed that creates life on earth.  In other regions it was supposed that in the beginning of the world there was a world-egg, out of which a primeval god came, whose body was represented by the earth:  his hair formed the plants, and his limbs the mountains and valleys.  Every considerable mountain was also itself a god and, similarly, the river god, the thunder god, cloud, lightning, and wind gods, and many others were worshipped.