Chinese and Sumerian

Vill INTRODUCTION

character for owse, Dangin 423. It looks like the symbol for netting, network, net, D. 422, with an added line at the bottom of the figure. a SA, SAD, is xet (also house according to Br. 3072) and E(N), E, is Zouse. Now, what possible resem-

blance of form or relation of ideas is traceable between a net and a house? The Net-symbol, in what may be called its proper sense, is easily intelligible as a rough picture of the object it represents—a thing of cross-threads or strands knotted or twined together. But the bare linear figure might equally well stand for any other fabric consisting of materials crossing each other or plaited or interwoven together, é.g. a wickerwork screen or a wall of open reed matting, such as is still used in constructing the temporary dwellings of Bedawis; and the pictogram of such a reed wall might become the chosen symbol of a house with walls of this kind (fA WE. xi. 20 ff. quoted below). Hence also the same character, D. 423, could be used for LIL, the wind; since it might for that purpose be taken to represent a piece of matting used asa sail. This possibility is confirmed by the fact that the wind (w= TU!) is symbolized by the outline of a full sail, in the old Egyptian hieroglyphic script. And my view of the primary significance of the house ideogram, expressed in notes made years ago, seems to find support in the following statements of Prof. Elie Réclus, which 1 came upon for the first time quite recently: ‘One sees in the Egyptian temples that their columns were imitations of Nile reeds tied in a bundle, that ther walls were an imitation of plaited mats. ‘It is a theory amongst architects . . . that the first buildings of men, inhabitants of caves, holes, or trees, were not dwellings for themselves, but simple hearth-places protected by reed walls and some thatching against wind and rain. They believe that on this model of asprytaneum or abode of the fire-god, the abode of his priest, and then of the kings “and chiefs of noble families, were successively erected’ Vid. Encycl. Brit. viii. 617.

It would appear, then, that this primitive pictogram for house (and wud), which, so far as I know, has not hitherto been explained, really figures a reed wall, when it denotes a house, and a reed or mat sail (Ch. WE li), when it denotes the wind.t

LIL is also ‘the earth or land’, as the realm of the god Bél, EN-LIL, ‘the Lord of Earth’. The earth is thus regarded as a great house or dwelling-place (va. Creation-Tab. V, ad fin.). Both word and character may survive in the Chinese i li, ‘a place of residence’ (kien-shou, ku yé), which has been altered to suggest fe/d +

* Cf. the well-known passage of the Nimrod Epic:

Amdtsund usanna | ana kekkikd ‘Their talk he told to the reed-hut:

Kikhis: kikkis | wgar igar “ Reed-hut! reed-hut! wall! wall!

Kikkisd Siméma | igaru hissas Reed-hut hearken, and wall perpend!”’ (WE. xi. 20 ff.)

Prof. Giles quotes a Chinese saying: Mei-yiu puh-t‘ou-féng-tih li-pa, ‘There is no wattle-fence which will not let the wind through’= Walls have ears (G. 6908).