Chinese and Sumerian

XI INTRODUCTION

depict the human foot with projecting heel. The four cross-lines were, in that case, possibly added to suggest a ‘four-foot’ or quadruped. As in analogous instances, the simple form without these lines (D. 224) was used when a Phonetic was added to indicate the species, such as the E-LIM or the LU-LIM, the ‘ram’ or ‘stag’ (buck ?): see D. 228; 2209.

It will doubtless, however, have occurred to the reader that all the animals in whose names this character appears, are hoofed or hard-footed; so that the symbol, in this application, might indicate horses, asses, mules, camels, rams, or bucks, as ‘hoofs’ (cf. Exod. x. 26: ‘There shall not a hoof be left behind’), It is, therefore, a natural question to ask how the same symbol could also denote the human foot, which is not hard and horny, but soft and fleshy. Upon the whole, it seems possible that the strange figure under consideration was originally a pictogram of the shod human foot which, like the hoofs of quadrupeds, presented a hard surface to the ground; or, more simply and probably, it was the rude outline of some kind of boot, held up sideways and heel upwards, and showing the thongs or cross-straps. (Sve PerrotChipiez, AC. ii, Plates X; XV.) Such a symbol might come to be used ideographically to signify also the hoofed or hard-footed animals, regarded as shod by nature. (Cf, Houghton, 7.SBA. vi. 470; and Hommel’s explanation of the symbol as Sandale mit Zehen.) To conclude our consideration of this peculiar ideogram, we may observe that, in view of the remarkable parallelism above noted between its use as a Determinative of certain species of quadrupeds and the corresponding use of the Horse-Radical in Chinese writing, we seem to be justified in assuming that the Chinese character for horse (R. 187) was not originally a picture of the animal, as is commonly supposed, but finds its archetype in this very ancient Sumerian symbol, some likeness to which the £u-wéx form still exhibits, in spite of attempts to assimilate it to the figure of a horse. (See Szgn-Uist, No. 73; and cf the analogous treatment of the Swine-characters, Nos. 71 and 72.)

A good example of the way in which the use of the primitive characters (which in themselves are merely pictures or, rather, roughly drawn outlines of physical objects) was extended to the metaphorical expression of mental phenomena, may be recognized in the linear form of -CESE] the ideogram for AG, to love (see Lex.), consisting of a dvshel or grain-measure with jive inside it (D. 62; 60-82). The bushel (or grain-receiver) may here be a metaphor for the body or belly, or perhaps an altered form of a lost character portraying it (fA p. xvi zo¢e). The conception of love as an inward fire is universal (Cant. viii. 6, 7). Or, possibly, the bushel covering the Fire-symbol may suggest a hidden fire (cf. Matt. v. 15); but the former is the more probable explanation. The linear character for GU(N), the neck or throat, apparently a bottle or vase (D. 352), presents an analogy. (The seeming ‘bottle’ may have originated in a rough sketch of the throat, the bulge being ‘Adam’s Apple’. Sve Sign-list, No. 104.)