Sarah Allan

Who is Sarah Allan?

Sarah Allan is an American scholar of ancient China. She is a Professor of Asian and Middle Eastern Languages and Literatures, and of Asian and Middle Eastern Studies at Dartmouth College; she has taught at the School of Oriental and African Studies at London University. She is best known for her work on the mythological and philosophical systems of the early Chinese civilization.

In her work, Allan has presented an attempt to reconstruct the basic concepts of the mythology of China's Shang Dynasty based on evidence from a number of sources: Shang's own inscriptions; myths and stories recorded during the Zhou and Han Dynasties that followed the Shang, which appear to be derived from Shang sources; as well as archaeological data.