Elephant Shaped Ritual Liquor Containers

This is a brass jar for rice wine used at a ritual of the drink offering to heaven. In the sacrificial rites at the Royal Ancestral Shrine, four types of jars, each shaped in an ox, elephant, and symbols of yin and yang were used.
As elephants are huge animals that come from the warm region of Nanye (南越), the elephant jars were used for the rites in spring and summer. As for the shapes, two types, one for keeping rice wine in a lidded jar and the other for keeping rice wine in a separate jar placed on top of the animal’s body, have been passed down.