The Sword of Goujian (traditional Chinese: 越王勾踐劍; simplified Chinese: 越王勾践剑; pinyin: Yuèwáng Gōujiàn jiàn) is a bronze jian renowned for its unusual sharpness, intricate design of black rhombic etchings and resistance to tarnish rarely seen in extant artifacts of a similar age. Discovered in 1965 in an ancient tomb in Hubei, the sword is identified through the inscriptions on its blade as having been made and owned by Goujian (r. 496–465 BCE), one of the last kings of Yue during the Spring and Autumn period. The sword is known as one of the earliest surviving examples of ancient Chinese sword craft that utilized complex metallurgical techniques and it is considered one of the most important objects held in the Hubei Provincial Museum.

The sword was discovered in 1965, when an archaeological survey was being performed along the second main aqueduct of the Zhang River Reservoir in Jingzhou, Hubei. Through this process, a series of ancient tombs was uncovered in Jiangling County. A dig started in the middle of October 1965, finishing in January 1966 and eventually revealed more than fifty ancient tombs of the Chu State.

More than 2,000 artifacts were recovered from the sites, including an ornate bronze sword, found inside a casket together with a human skeleton. The casket was discovered in December 1965, at Wangshan site #1, 7 kilometres (4.3 mi) from the ruins of Ying, currently called Jinancheng (纪南), an ancient capital of Chu.

The sword was found sheathed in a wooden scabbard finished in black lacquer. The scabbard had an almost air-tight fit with the sword body. Unsheathing the sword revealed an almost untarnished blade, despite the tomb being soaked in underground water for over 2,000 years.

Swords already became an important component of royal regalia and a symbol of their right to rule since the early Zhou dynasty where King Cheng was buried with a red blade that later Han historians like Zheng Xuan believed had belonged to the last king of the Shang dynasty. The late Spring and Autumn period saw the rise of the practice of sword lore, where high quality swords were given unique names based on a particular quality of the sword such as its color, patterns, metallurgical hardness or its sharpness. This custom was particularly prominent in the states of Wu and Yue and within their royal families. Olivia Milburn has compared this to the medieval European practice of sword-naming. According to Milburn, the tales of these notable swords would later be systematically collected during the early Han dynasty and would become an important part of Chinese legend, recording down legendary swordsmiths of the period such as Gan Jiang and Mo Ye that would persist for millennia.

One of these compilations, the "Historical Texts of the Kingdom of Yue" (Chinese: 越絕書; pinyin: Yue jue shu) reported that King Goujian had five named swords in particular that were known throughout "the subcelestial realm." Some of Goujian's named swords included "Purity" (Chinese: 純鈞; pinyin: Chunjun) and "Refulgence" (Chinese: 步光; pinyin: Buguang), which the king had been said to have worn when meeting Confucius for advice, and it is likely that the Sword of Goujian also had been named, though this naming has now been lost.

On one side of the blade near the hilt, two columns of gilded text are visible, Inlaid in gold, eight Chinese characters are written in an ancient script, now known as Bird-worm seal script (literally "birds and worms characters", owing to the intricate decorations of the defining strokes), a variant of seal script. Initial analysis of the text deciphered six of the characters, "King of Yue" (Chinese: 越王; pinyin: Yuèwáng) and "made this sword for [his] personal use" (Chinese: 自作用劍; pinyin: Zì zuòyòng jiàn). The remaining two characters were assumed to be the name of the particular King of Yue.

戊王鳩淺，自乍用鐱。
越王勾踐，自作用劍。
This Sword is made and used by the King of Yue himself.