Three Variations on the Indus 'Man' Sign

In the following, I discuss three Indus signs that are variations on the basic MAN (V23).  The first of these appears to be this same MAN standing on a horizontal base and positioned upside-down.  Due to this resemblance, I term the sign DOWN MAN ON BASE (VI47).  It appears only in one of the lists, that of Wells, where it receives two different identifying numbers: W48 and W57.  Each of these instances is a singleton, the first appearing at Mohenjo daro (M-306) and the second at Chandigarh (Ch-3).  I prefer to group the two as variants of a single sign, “A” and “B” respectively.  I do not think they really represent humans, especially in the case of the “B” variant, which has a very long “head” or stem.  It is more likely that they represent flowers.

Seal M-306 with inscription: VEE IN DIAMOND / DOWN MAN ON BASE / POTTED ONE / PACMAN / CRAB / POT / TRIPLE BRICK (smoothing of image and coloring added by author).

Parallels to this sign are frequent, a fact that I find surprising.  There is a slight resemblance to the Egyptian hieroglyph that supposedly represents the bicornuate uterus of a heifer (F45).  If we wish to consider the Indus sign as actually representing a human, then for comparison there is also a glyph of an upside-down man (A29).  It is a determinative in a word meaning “be upside-down.”  The latter glyph does not actually resemble the Indus sign, though.



Pot shard Ch-3 with DOWN MAN ON BASE (coloring and smoothing of image added) -- note long "head."

 Old Chinese presents a much closer analogy in the character zi3, “a new-born child, swathed up...By extension, disciple; then, a sage, a teacher, because the ancient Emperors, in order to honour them, called them sons” (Wieger 1965: 233).  In its original form, the Chinese character has a round head and the arms are a curved line, so that the Indus sign resembles an angular version of this.  It is interesting to note that this same ancient character appears upside-down in the character that means “birth.”  Another anthropomorphic character occasionally occurs upside-down, early on: “In some very rare but most precious figures, the deceased Ancestor is represented diving, head foremost, from heavens above, towards the hand of his offering son” (1965: 370).  This ancestral figure has now become the character tian1, “heaven, sky.”

Chinese oracle-bone variants
of zi3, "child."

A closer parallel graphically than any anthropomorphic character occurs in the calendrical character xin, which looks essentially the same as one identified by Wieger as qian2, “to offend a superior...; offence, fault, crime...By extension, to attack” (1965: 249).  In addition, the abstract bu2 is very similar, indicating “a bird that rises...straight towards the skies...now an adverb of negation” (1965: 302).

Oracle-bone variants of xin or qian2, "to offend."

But the closest in form to the Indus sign is one found in proto-cuneiform, identified as GU.  It came to mean “string; flax; needle.”  This sign is identical to the Indus sign except for its horizontal position, a common feature.  Doubled, the proto-cuneiform sign becomes SUH3, which came to signify “chaos, disorder.” 

Two variants of oracle-bone bu2, "not."

Nearly the same sign as GU is one that appears in doubled form in proto-Elamite, but with the “head” on the opposite side and the “arms” angled away from this “head” rather than toward it (M127 + M127).  Despite the designation for the proto-Elamite sign, it does not appear singly in the list of signs (i.e., M127 is not listed as an independent sign).  It may be relevant to observe another similar sign in proto-Elamite (M099).  It is closer to the Indus BOWTIE, with the addition of a stroke crossing at the point where the apexes of the two triangles come together.

The final proto-Elamite example is identical in form to a symbol found in west Africa, the Adinkra dono ntoaso (Willis 1998: 92).  This African motif is positioned vertically, unlike the proto-Elamite example, and means “double dono,” referring to a particular type of drum.

Indus seal C-30 with inscription: STACKED FIVE / LOOP ARMED MAN HOLDING SLASH /
CARTWHEEL BETWEEN DOUBLE POSTS (smoothing of image and coloring added).

Inscription on copper object: LOOP ARMED MAN HOLDING BACKSLASH /
CARTWHEEL (smoothing and coloring added).

The second Indus sign considered here is one I clumsily term LOOP ARMED MAN HOLDING SLASH, with a variant LOOP ARMED MAN HOLDING BACKSLASH (VI48).  It appears in all three of the lists: KP11, W2 and W23, and Fs A-5.  Fairservis declares it to be a man with an arrow, but gives its meaning as “mother, mother as a deity (?).”  This seems extraordinarily odd to me.  If it has female meaning, I should think it must represent a woman, not a man, and the object she is holding is more likely to be a baby than an arrow.  Bearing such a possible meaning in mind, compare the figurine which is holding a baby or small child, usually identified as a male but with nipples, reproduced at upper right ("bouncing baby blog").  It is a replica of an actual Harappan artifact.  Whatever the figurine really represents may be the model behind this Indus sign.

Wells gives the sign two designations, based on the side on which the diagonal stroke appears, with each one further subdivided into four variants (although his summary for W23 contradicts this by stating the number of variants to be only 1).  His W2 holds a backslash (i.e., diagonal stroke on the right in the actual inscriptions, which he reverses) totaling 49 occurrences: 33 from Mohenjo daro, including all four subtypes, “a,” “b,” “c,” and “d”; eight from Harappa, including “a” and “b”; three from Lothal, including “a” and “d”; three from Chanhujo daro including “b” and “c”; and two from Kalibangan including “c” and “d.”  I prefer to term these variants “Aa” through “Ad.”  His W23 holds a slash (i.e., actually a diagonal stroke on the left, reversed again in his list) totaling four occurrences: one from Mohenjo daro of “a”; and three from Lothal, described as “a,” “b” and “d,” which seems to leave no actual occurrences of “c.”  These I would term "Ba" to "Bc."  It is mostly the form of the upper half of the sign that varies, with only a minority having a clear anthropomorphic appearance.

To this rather unusual sign we may wish to compare the Old Chinese character nu3, which now means “girl, woman, female” (Wieger 1965: 169).  In the oldest form shown, the character is anthropomorphic but headless, with the arms hanging down and curved toward the center of the body.  Later, one arm essentially disappears, leaving an asymmetrical form.  The addition of strokes to represent breasts changes this to mu3, “mother” (1965: 171).



Proto-Elamite signs, from top: M127 and M099; at bottom, M123~d (cf. Indus
DOWN MAN ON BASE and LOOP ARMED MAN HOLDING SLASH).

 Proto-Elamite has a sign with some resemblance to the more anthropomorphic variants of the Indus sign (M123~d).  This seems to be a horizontal “man” with angular arms bent at the elbow, but without any object held.  A variant is quite different, however, changing the looping arms into a symmetrical triangle crossed by a straight line, with the “legs” very short (M123~ca).  The whole thing then more closely resembles an arrow than a person.



Seal Ns-5 with inscription: CARTWHEEL / BI-QUOTES / (over) STACKED SIX / FISH / POT /
ROUND HEADED MAN (detail, smoothing of image and color added).

The last Indus sign for this post is another variant of MAN given the further description ROUND HEAD (to be designated either MAN WITH ROUND HEAD or ROUND-HEADED MAN).  I enumerate it VI49 as the forty-ninth of the six-stroke signs.  Only Wells gives this type a separate listing, as W3c.  That is, it is the “c” variant of Wells’ MAN, although to my eyes it ought to be conflated with Wells’ “b” variant.  Wells states that there are 47 occurrences of the MAN in four variants, but does not specify the frequency of “c” variant.  I consider these to be L-4, K-16, B-1 (which also has feet), and Ns-5 (which is more like Wells’ “b”).  Wells shows VI49 to have an inverted triangular body in addition to the round head, which increases the stroke number.  And we could subdivide these further, since B-1 is small and K-16 tall, B-1 also set apart by its feet.

Chinese Old Seal writing from bronze votive object,

showing tian1 (second character from bottom on left).

This sign has many parallels around the world.  In Old Chinese, the deceased ancestor often appears in inscriptions with a rounded head and sometimes with a body thicker than a simple vertical line (Wieger 1965: 372, 367).  This character becomes tian1, discussed earlier.  Also in China, the NaXi proto-writing system makes use of an anthropomorphic symbol that typically has a round head, but stick limbs and body.

Proto-Elamite has a vaguely similar sign with a boxy “body” and triangular “head” (M320~f).  It also seems to have “feet.”


Proto-Elamite sign M320~f, which resembles an angular anthropomorph.



In the rock art of North America, there are often human-like figures with round heads and these frequently have thick bodies but stick limbs.  Such figures appear in Texas (e.g., Kirkland and Newcomb 1996: 177, Pl. 125, no. 2-C), in Arizona (e.g., Noble 1991: 62), and in Nevada and eastern California (e.g., Heizer and Baumhoff 1984: after 245, Pl. 20b; 294, fig. D-1n).  The last of these sources note 34 occurrences of anthropomorphic figures with semi-realistic heads and bodies but stick limbs (1984: 90). 

Schematic human figures from a "wampum belt" (Mohawk; redrawn from Appleton 1971: 18).

Similar figures occur in rock art elsewhere, both in Africa (e.g., Le Quellec 2004: 39, fig. 37 in the Wadi Sura of the Libyan desert; 71, fig. 22, in the shelter of Modjodje-Do in Mali; and 86-87, figs. 46 and 47 on the Pedra do Feitiço on the bank of the Zaire River) and in Australia (e.g., Flood 1997: 218, at Euriowia, western New South Wales; 219 at Mootwingee; and 220 in a rock shelter in Gunderbooks Range, Cobar region, western New South Wales).  In Australia this type of depiction is termed Simple Figurative.  It is variable in size (large and small), form (painting, drawing, and engraving), and date (from several thousand years old to considerably more recent) (1997: 220).  Large engravings and paintings tend to occur in the Sydney region, while small figures appear in the Cobar region.  Many, if not all, of both types (large and small figures), in Australia and Africa, are thought to have served ritual and religious functions in the societies of their creators.

It is very possible that the icons – the pictorial elements – on Indus seals and tablets also served a religious function.  That is, the people of the Indus Valley may have worshipped deities in the form of animals and, occasionally, human-animal hybrids.  Fairservis, on the other hand, sees the icons as representing social groups such as lineages or clans.  This is another possibility.  Most scholars in this field do not consider the inscriptions and icons to be related.  But, in the absence of decipherment, this point of view remains hypothetical, not proven.

ADDITIONAL REFERENCE:

Appleton, Le Roy H. 1971. American Indian Design and Decoration. New York: Dover (originally published 1950 by Chrles Scribner's Sons with the title Indian Art of the Americas).

Signs with Added Ear or Slash and Another Shish Kebab

Today's post will cover several rare signs made by adding what I term an "ear" or a diagonal line similar to a slash (or backslash), as well as another SHISH KEBAB, this one made with four strokes.  The first is DOUBLE POSTS WITH EAR, IV18.  It does not appear in any list but that of Wells, where it is numbered 228.  This is a singleton according to Wells, occuring only at Lothal (L-87).  As usual, he shows the sign reversed from the way it appears on the actual seal, with the "ear" on the left side in his representation whereas it is on the right side on the seal.  This added element is small and positioned at the top of the right-hand post, almost triangular.  It resembles the ear of various animals in the icons on seals that have them, such as bovines, the rhino, and the tiger.  That accounts for my term.

Petroglyphs from the western United States, including plant motif similar to Indus SHISH KEBAB

lower right (Heizer and Baumhoff 1984).

I think the actual symbol is merely a single post with this triangular element attached, which I would term a PENNANT.  I think this because it occurs without an additional "post" on two tablets at Mohenjo daro (M-1635 and M-1636).  On these, the PENNANT appears beside a BLANKET WITH 5 TICKS (3 x 2).  In addition, there is an additional symbol where the PENNANT occurs, a ligature, the CIRCLED PENNANT.

In runic alphabets, a similar symbol occurs, resembling an angular "P," representing the "w" sound in the Norse system (FUTHARK).  The angular attachment is displaced to the center of the vertical line to represent the "th" sound in both the Norse and Anglo-Saxon runic alphabets (FUTHARK and FUTHORC).

The second Indus sign for today is similar to first except for the shape of the lines.  It is DOUBLE CEES WITH EAR, IV19, also known as KP173(a) and W579 (not shown in Fairservis).  It appears twice, once with a curved ear on the left (M-1274) and once where the top line of the ear is straight (M-1277).

Our third Indus sign is also similar except that the shape of the lines now resembles our letter "S": DOUBLE ESSES WITH EAR, IV20.  This sign is also KP173(b) but does not appear elsewhere.  It appears to be a singleton, occuring in H-97, a broken seal, where it appears over three rectangles.

Djed-pillars and Tyet-knots beneath stars -- Egyptian motifs, one of which resembles Indus SHISH KEBAB.

The following sign adds two similar strokes, but in a different fashion, so that they form a small dip after the end of a line, rather than an attached ear-like shape.  This is STOOL WITH BENT FOOT, IV21.  This is my clumsy appellation (hopefully temporary) for KP229 and W456 (not shown in Fairservis).  Wells states that it occurs twice, once at Mohenjo daro and once at Harappa.  I see it three times (M-1020, M-1087, H-680).  The angle and height of the "bent foot" vary a bit, but these do seem much alike and quite rare as a symbol.  Obviously, if turned sideways such items would make very poor stools.

There is a single parallel motif in the rock art of Texas (Newcomb 1996: 124, Pl. 81, no. 9).  This element has its additional portion added to the lower "leg" rather than the upper one as the Indus sign does.  But it was the only similar item I found anywhere.

Next is POINTY DEE-SLASH, IV22, which occurs only as W562 elsewhere.  Wells gives its frequency as only three, with one occurrence each at Mohenjo daro, Harappa, and Desalpur.  I see four occurrences and two variants.  At Desalpur, where it is a seal impression, it is indeed a "dee" form.  That is to say, it looks like an angular version of our letter "D" with a slash through it.  The other three occurrences (M-12, H-44, and H-682), where it appears on seals, are reversed and thus BACK DEE in my terms.

I see two parallels.  One is quite close, ZATU694~c in proto-cuneiform.  It is a vertically oriented, backward and angular "D."  Its vertical line is slightly long, though.  Instead of a slash, it has a horizontal line crossing it.  Unfortunately, its meaning is unknown.  The other parallel is less close in form, a symbol found on  punch-marked coins of later India of the Magadha type.  This appears to be a bow positioned horizontally, with a short arrow positioned vertically across it.  The bow has a slight bend in the middle, reminiscent of the letter "B."  The arrow has a head, which the Indus sign lacks.

In the last post I mentioned the use of a "tick" or short stroke in Egyptian to note a distinction in pronunciation of a phonetic glyph.  In another glyph, a number of similar short strokes are used for a very different purpose.  In the Book of the Dead, the malevolence of the snake, a determinative in the word "revolt," is magically countered with no less than five backslashes (Budge 1967 and 1895: 3).  Thus, an additional element can signal a distinction in sound as in yesterday's Egyptian example, a distinction in meaning as in yesterday's Chinese example, or a magical intervention.  It is also quite possible that an additional stroke signals yet other meanings, ones that ancient people understood but we do not.

The next sign in the Indus script is a variant of the TRI-FORK, one I discussed before.  This particular one has two variants: SLASH IN BI-FORK / BACKSLASH IN BI-FORK, IV23 "a" and "b."  These type are not shown except in Wells, where they are W280 ("a" variant with slash) and W279 ("b" variant with backslash).  Each is a singleton according to Wells, both said to occur only at Lothal.  I see the slash on L-36 ("a" variant), the backslash on L-36 ("b" variant), in comparison to the three-stroke TRI-FORK on L-29.

Previously, I mentioned the possibility that such symbols might be depictions of bird tracks.  Some rock art includes apparent bird tracks that are off-kilter something like these Indus signs, including one from Texas (Newcomb 1996: 90, Pl. 50, no. 2).  Another example is from Australia (Flood 1997: 13, at Yiwarlarlay, Victoria River district, Northern Territory).  Runic alphabets also include some letters faintly resembling such motifs: variants of Norse letters for the "f" and "r/z" sounds (FUTHARK); Anglo-Saxon letters for "a," "o," and "x" (FUTHORC).

Naxi plant motif at lower right, a distant parallel to the Indus SHISH KEBAB (World Digital Library).

Today's final Indus sign is a four-stroke SHISH KEBAB, IV24, a vertical post with three crossing horizontals.  It has no exact KP number since KP99 has four crossing strokes.  Fairservis shows two variants of the SHISH KEBAB, K-4 having four crossing strokes, K-5 having five.  Only Wells shows this form (W268) as his variant "e."  Variants "a" through "g" in his list have four through six crossing strokes.  In this form, I see it only three times.  It occurs with a "vertical" stroke that leans to the left, almost a backslash, on Blk-1 from Balakot.  It probably is the sign on a broken pot shard from Harappa (H-378), although it is right at the edge, so it is difficult to be certain.  And it seems to occur on a round seal from Chanhujo-daro (C-48).  Such small, round seals tend to be peculiar, though, and often do not easily fit the classification of signs found elsewhere.

One or another variant of this sign appears widely around the world.  Old Chinese has a horizontal version with three crossing strokes, san-shi2, "thirty" (Wieger 1965: 71).  Normally, the character for "three," the first part of this numeral, is written with three stacked horizontals.  This is usually followed by a symbol much like our "plus" sign representing "ten."  This is how "thirty" is pronounced in the Chinese language and how it is written today.  But in the old style of writing, three tens could be written side by side and, in this variant, they are basically run together.

Another Old Chinese example is vertical like the Indus sign, jie4, "the first mnemonic way invented after the knotted strings....Notches cut in a bamboo lath.  By extension, deed, document, record, proof" (Wieger 1965: 240).  In this character, the strokes crossing the vertical are diagonal, three slashes.

Proto-cuneiform also has two parallels.  The first of these is horizontal, with four crossing strokes, NUN~b.  This came to mean "prince, noble; to rise up; great, noble."  The other is vertical but has many more crossing strokes, from five to as many as ten in one tablet I noted.  This is ASZ2, "emmer wheat; flour, bread."  A single horizontal type appears in proto-Elamite where it has no less than seven diagonal crossing lines.

In the rock art of North America, motifs of this type appear both on painted pebbles and the walls of caves and rock shelters in Texas (Newcomb 1996: 91, Pl. 51, no. 2; 106, Pl. 66, no. 3; 137, Pl. 92, no. 2).  In Nevada and eastern California there are 27 occurrences of these single-pole ladders, as they are thought to be (e.g., Heizer and Baumhoff 1984: 163, fig. 100a and f).  I see from three to seven "rungs" on these "ladders."  Australia also has the motif, with double-barred versions that may be representations of lizards at Wharton Hill, Olary region (Flood 1997: 185, L and Q).  A taller type with eight crossing lines appears in association with giant bird track engravings at Eucolo Creek (1997: 112).

In the Danube Valley, similar motifs also occur with two to four crossing lines (DS132 two crossbars; DS133 variant three crossbars; DS134 four crossbars).  In addition, in later India, a form similar to the SHISH KEBAB but with crossbars that slant a bit upward from the central vertical appears inside a circle on punch-marked coins of the Magadha type.  This motif has two of these bent crossbars.  A somewhat similar motif has three bent crossbars each of which ends in a small circle.  The top of the central vertical also ends in a small circle.  Both of these motifs may be representations of plants.

Other plant-like motifs appear in the art of ancient Egypt, as shown in the illustration that accompanied a previous post from a vase.  The vase came from King Tut's tomb.  The small motif was relegated to areas bordering the main scene of the lion attacking its prey.  The motif itself probably represents an ear of grain, perhaps barley in this case.  There is a hieroglyph that is quite similar, but this one does not function as a glyph.  There is also an Indus glyph that is more like the ear of grain, to be discussed later.

Another Egyptian glyph that is somewhat more like the SHISH KEBAB is the dd pillar, pronounced like the name Jed.  This probably began as a group of reeds tied together or stalks of some other plant so bound.  But in Egyptian religious thought it represented the backbone of their god Osiris.  It was a hieroglyph also, meaning stability, often appearing next to the ankh or, as in the illustration provided, a relative of the ankh, the sacred knot tyt (pronounced something like "chatty").

A final illustration included here comes from Naxi proto-writing, as used in China until the early 20th century.  Although I do not know the precise significance of the symbol, it is basically pictorial and represents some type of plant.  It is more like the grain ear in the Egyptian vase than the SHISH KEBAB, once again.

Funny Hats or Boats with Gunification

There are three signs in the Indus script that are basically like the one I termed the BOAT (II 16), a CEE or BACK CEE with a smaller curve attached in the middle, plus an additional line.  In early Sumerian cuneiform, the use of an addition mark or two to make a semantic distinction is called "gunification."  It may be that the addition of a short stroke in the Indus script -- whether a slash, backslash, quote, or a small two-stroke element I term an "ear" -- is a similar phenomenon.

Pueblo pottery (not quite a "D" with a triangle or slash inside)

The first of these slightly odd signs is only tentatively separated from the BOAT sign as it has a pointy "cabin," not a curved one.  Thus, the sign falls in the three-stroke set rather than the two-stroke set with the original.  I am hesitantly giving it a distinct name, HAT, numbering it III30.  It has no separate KP number nor a separate listing in Fairservis' account of the signs.  Wells does show it as a separate sign, W587, stating that it is a singleton, appearing only on M-136. 

That is an interesting inscription because the pointy "cabin" was apparently overlooked by Koskenniemi and Parpola.  The HAT appears there in "cee" form beside FOUR CEES, while KP 177 is FIVE BACK CEES.  These authors systematically reverse the signs on the seals, showing them as they would appear in impressions.  This accounts for the discrepancy between the CEES on the seal and the BACK CEES in their list.  But it doesn't account for the discrepancy in the number.  For them to arrive at five, they must have counted the HAT as one of the CEES.

Naxi symbol of negative in upper right resembles Indus BOAT

But although I agree with Wells' reading of the inscription as containing the CEE HAT, I don't think this sign is a singleton.  I think H-98 also has one.  And I think there are two BACK CEE HATS (which we can call variant "b" while the first type is variant "a"), too.  These are H-380 and L-190A (1-3), an impression or tag.  There is also one four-stroke variant which we may term "c."  It looks something like an angular version based on a wide open "less than" sign with a small "greater than" sign inside (Dlp-1).

The reason I called the original sign II 16 a "boat" was due to what I fancy is a resemblance to Egyptian P1 and even more to P4.  The first represents a boat on water.  The boat is depicted as a "C"-like curve, although resting horizontally as boats usually do, not vertically like the Indus sign.  But we saw with the "fish"-like sign that Indus symbols generally are tall and thin rather than being positioned horizontally.  This may be due to space constraints.  Of course, besides the oddity of a boat standing on its prow or stern, we would have to explain the differences between the hieroglyph and the Indus sign: there is no oar in the Indus sign as there is in glyph P1 and there is no water either.  But perhaps the Indus seal carvers were more interested in making their symbols with as few lines as possible rather than as graphically lovely as possible.  Still, the resemblance is pretty slight and I won't press it.

Does this replica show an Indus bowman (DEE-SLASH with arm and legs)?

Proto-cuneiform presents a better case.  There are two parallels, actually.  In this proto-writing system, the difference between the CEE version and the BACK CEE version is meaningful.  The "C"-like version is a variant of AB2, originally a representation of a cow's head.  It basically means "cow."  When the "C" portion is turned the other way, it is a representation of the sun coming up between hills or on the horizon, U4, a sign that came to mean "sun, day."  Note, however, that in the latter case the part representing the sun is always curved, so far as I can tell.

Proto-Elamite also contains close parallels.  One of these has a "C"-like shape which is turned like an upside-down "U" or ROOF element in the Indus script.  A small pointed triangle or "v" shape descends from this (M447).  A variant of this is made by placing a slash against a backslash, each incised with double lines.  The small pointed triangle or "v" shape descends from the inner peak as before (M447~b).  Another variant is a "great than sign" in which the "v"-like sign is turned sideways, on the left side (M447~c).  The meaning is unknown.

Luwian hieroglyphs present a more distant parallel that may provide a possible hint of meaning.  A backward "C" shape is closed by a vertical line with another vertical beside it.  To the left of the first vertical a smaller "c" shape is appended in the center.  The whole sign resembles a child's toy top which has fallen on its side.  This can be taken as VIR, which means "man," or as the syllable zi.  As the latter, it sometimes has yet another additional vertical stripe.

This shape is not common in rock art.  But there is a somewhat similar symbol among those listed for the Adinkra of West Africa (reference below).  This symbol is a "C" shape lying flat on its back, boat fashion.  Just above it and not touching is a small circle, out of which come several short rays, eight by my count.  At the end of each ray is a round knob.  This symbol is said to represent the moon and a star, meaning "love, faithfulness, and harmony."

Bowman (Heizer and Baumhoff 1984: 190, fig. 127b)

In designs found on the pottery of the Pueblo Indians, too, there is an equally distant parallel.  In some semi-circular designs, a white triangle is painted on a black background (Chapman 1995: 21).  However, the triangle normally is positioned with the apex toward the curved side of the half-circle, not the flat side.  This is essentially the opposite of the configuration found in the Indus sign.

Moving on, I term the next sign the BOAT WITH OAR, for lack of a better name, III31.  It was formerly KP161, W563, not shown in Fairservis.  Wells sees three of these, but I only recognize this symbol in two of the cases he cites (H-145 and Ns-6).  Both are "cee" shapes, the first with a curved "cabin," the second with a much smaller, possibly pointy "cabin" (and thus it really should be in the four-stroke list).  Both have a backslash across the upper portion of the "cee."  The last of the occurrences that Wells cites, M-677, has no "cabin" at all.  It is an instance of CEE & SLASH, II 17.

Bowman (Newcomb 1996: 86, Pl. 47, no. 4)

This sign reminds me of the Egyptian glyph P1, the boat with an oar I mentioned earlier, hence my name for it.  But there is also an Old Chinese character with roughly the same shape, yu3, "the full spoon, with an index [i.e., a horizontal line added] meaning that it is being emptied" (Wieger 1965: 146).  This suggests a possible reason for adding a stroke to an existing sign.  In Old Chinese the basic spoon without that added horizontal line is shao3.

In proto-cuneiform, the same "cow" symbol occurs with a horizontal stroke added: |1(N57).AB2|.  This is a way of indicating "one cow."  Or as it might be said more elegantly, "one head of cattle."  The symbol for a day can also receive a stroke, either horizontal or diagonal (a backslash): |U4 x 1(N57)| or |U4 x 1(N58)@t|.  Either way, it means "one day."

The third sign is one I call BOAT WITH BENT OAR, III32.  It has two variants, "a" and "b."  In these, the additional stroke is vertical and short, so the sign looks something like the FINLESS FISH standing on its nose, only the one side stroke is longer so that it's a "cee" stroke.  Then there is a short vertical stroke hanging down off one of this peculiar fish's back fins.  This sign was formerly KP170 (stroke on left), W147 (left stroke) and W132 (right stroke), but has no listing in Fairservis.  There is apparently only one of each of the variants; M-725 has the stroke on the left; K-24 has the stroke on the right.

Mycenaean Greek bowman

While this would be a rather odd sort of boat, I note that in Egyptian there is P3, the sacred bark.  Gardiner gave only one version in his list but noted that details of this boat varied greatly from rendition to rendition in reality.  That was because there were actually many different sacred barks, one for Re during the day and then his night boat, the sacred bark of dawn, the sacred neshmet boat of Abydos, and so on.  Each was different.

In proto-cuneiform, such signs as AB2 (the cow) and U4 (the sun, day) could take two or more additional strokes, not just one.  This was one way scribes indicated "two cows," and "two days" and so on.

There is also a sign that resembles our letter "D" with a slash through it.  Although most authors assume this to be a representation of a bow and arrow, I simply term it DEE-SLASH and its reversed variant BACK DEE-SLASH, III33.  Strictly speaking, there should also be two more angular variants, each of which takes four strokes, triangular variants that have points on the sides instead of curves.  All are apparently subsumed as KP182 and Fs H-1, the bow and arrow, which the latter author states had the pronunciation vil-ambu, ambila-"rice (?)," ambal, "grain."  Personally, I can't see using a bow and arrow as the a depiction for grain when there seems to be a sign that is a representation of an ear of grain.  But we won't talk about that right now.

Bowman from cylinder seal (Nimrud, Iraq; Collon 2005: 77, no. 337)

Wells separates the sign into three categories.  For him, the "D" version is W560 with a frequency of 27, the backward "D" being W564 with a frequency of 2, and the angular "D" W562 with a frequency of 3.  I must admit I saw one angular "D" (Dlp-3, a tag) and three angular backward "D" variants (H-44, H-682, and M-12).  But Wells systematically reverses signs that appear on seals, so this is a matter of definition.  I see 16 rounded "D" types; 13 rounded backward "D" types; 1 angular "D" type; 3 angular backward "D" types.  So, we have a bit of a disagreement about what's what and where.  This is a good example of why the decisions on how to transcribe ancient texts should be done by committees, not individuals.

As a comparison, I looked at Egyptian glyphs of bows and arrows.  Their bow glyph T10 looks like our letter "B" lying on its bumpy side, only it's very thin.  The older glyph T11 is rather like the bumpy side of the same letter, minus the vertical line, only it's made with doubled lines.  It is completely unlike the Indus sign.  The Old Chinese bow looks even less like the Indus sign.  In fact, the Indus DEE-SLASH most closely resembles the Old Chinese zhan1, "to ask about some enterprise by singeing a tortoise shell; divination."  This character is a "D" that is lying on its rounded part with a little "T" lying on its side, on top of the flat part.  It's not much like the Indus sign, but it does contain the "dee."

Proto-cuneiform has a closer parallel in ZATU 852.  This is similar to a backward "D" shape in which the curve does not quite touch the vertical line.  Then instead of a high and rising slash mark, as in the Indus sign, instead there is a low one.  The meaning of this sign is unknown.  There does not seem to be a comparable sign in proto-Elamite.

Bowmen in South African rock art (Maggs 1979: 45, Pl. 43)

In the rock art of North America there are many anthropoid figures depicted in stylized fashion, often with a "D" or backward "D" shape overlapping or near the hand.  A slash or backslash usually overlaps or lies close to this "D" shape.  In these cases it is clearly a person with bow and arrow (Newcomb 1996: 88, Pl. 49, no. 9; Heizer and Baumhoff 1984: 190, fig. 127b).  This motif does not occur in Australian rock art since the bow and arrow were not part of the material culture of the native people of this continent prior to the arrival of Europeans.

In the rock art of South Africa, the evidence is more equivocal.  Paintings of people with bows and arrows certainly appear (Maggs 1979: frontispiece, 27, 45).  But the style varies.  Sometimes the wooden portion of the bow is shown, but not the string, as if the bow were being carried unstrung; sometimes both  parts are depicted but the shape is like the pointed oval or diamond among the Indus signs, rather than the "D."  The only occurrence of the "dee"-like form I observed was in some of those shown in the large group at Mount Hope, Tarkastad, eastern Cape border, where small figures are fighting large figures (1979: 45, fig. 43).

REFERENCES (additions to the list provided in a previous post)

Adinkra Index http://www.adinkra.org/htmls/adinkra_index.htm West African Wisdom: Adinkra Symbols & Meanings

Chapman, Kenneth. 1995. Pueblo Pottery Design. New York: Dover. (reprint of The Pottery of Santo Domingo Pueblo: A Detailed Study of Its Decoration, Memoirs of the Laboratory of Anthropology, Vol. I, pub. 1953 at the University of New Mexico, Santa Fe).

Maggs, Tim, ed. 1979. Major Rock Paintings of Southern Africa, facsimile reproductions by R. Townley Johnson. Bloomington: Indiana University Press.

Cups and Roofs

One of the more common symbols in the Indus script is basically shaped like our capital letter "U," a sign I call the CUP.  It is designated II7 in my system.  The II means it takes two strokes to draw it, at least for the Harappans.  Originally I assumed it would be written with a single stroke because that's how I write the letter "U," but close examination of the seals, tablets, and especially the pot shards with this symbol changed my opinion.  The Harappans apparently started at the top and made one stroke down one side, ending at the bottom.  The second stroke also began at the top, on the other side, also ending at the bottom.  This method of drawing the CUP tended to leave the sign with a bit of a point at the bottom, a tendency that became quite pronounced in some cases.  In fact, sometimes it looks a lot more like "V" than "U."  Some of the CUPS are broad, some very thin, some tall and some short.  A few are lop-sided.  There are also two that are rather peculiar and seem to have taken four strokes to complete.  These begin with back to back parentheses or BACK CEE and CEE ) ( with a small V tacked on underneath.

Mixtec proto-writing including "AO" symbol

All these CUPS grouped together have the designations KP310, W289 and 293 (I'm uncertain why he separates them), and J-1 in Fairservis' list.  The latter author saw this symbol as a container, either a pot or a basket, which was used to measure quantity.  He gives its meaning as "container -- quantity pottery" (Fairservis 1992: 149-152).  No doubt he was influenced in his decision to assign it the meaning of a measure of quantity by the fact that so many of the tablets have brief inscriptions comprising this sign plus an apparent numeral between one and four.  In a later post I will explain why I think that probably is not what it means.

For now, we will examine similar signs in other scripts.  Egyptian has a fair number of glyphs containing "U" shapes, although none are that simple.  The horns of an ox are basically that shape (F13).  However, there is more detail to the horns, they curve somewhat differently, and they contain more lines.  A "U" shape with an additional horizontal line across the top is a well full of water (N42).  A similar sign that is wider, more like the letter "D" that has fallen over on its rounded belly, and which also has a little diamond shape inside, is an alabaster basin (W3).  If we're willing to turn the "U" with the line across the top on its side, making an elongated "D" shape, we have a sandy tongue of land from the Old Kingdom (N22).  And if we're willing to flip this completely upside-down it's a heap of grain (M35).  Then, if we add a little curved line inside the upside-down gadget, it becomes a domed building (O46).  Admittedly, these last few have gotten pretty far-fetched.  It would be much simpler to say that Egyptian provides no clearcut parallels.

Navaho sand painting

Old Chinese is much more helpful.  A very nice, simple "U" shape (minus the serifs in this font) is kan3, "a hole in the earth, a pit" (Wieger 1965: 105).  A very similar shape but with the upright lines pulled in just a bit yields chu1, "basin, porringer" (Wieger 1965: 106).  In case you're not familiar with porringers -- and I wasn't until I looked it up -- they're little bowls like the ones you probably eat your cornflakes out of in the morning.  Luwian hieroglyphs lacks a "U" shape, per se.  But flip it upside down, call it a roof, and there it is.  In this form it represents the vowel i.

Proto-cuneiform generally contains things that are turned sideways compared to the Indus signs.  This is the case with the CUP, more or less.  There is a sign designated SHU2 which has two forms, not distinguished by letter as they normally are in the CDLI list.  One is angular and resembles a "less than" sign in mathematics.  The other resembles our front parenthesis:

<     (

The parenthesis-like variant is thus somewhat similar to the Indus CUP in a general way.  In later times, the proto-cuneiform sign came to mean "cover, covering; surface; a musical interval of lyre strings 6 and 3; to set, become dark, be overcast; to cover, envelop; overthrow, throw down."
Proto-Elamite also has similar signs, one resembling our "greater than" mathematical symbol (obviously pointing in the opposite direction of the proto-cuneiform sign).  This is M064.  Another has elongated sides formed by horizontal lines before attaching this same type of "greater than" sign at the bottom (M290).  This creates a sort of CUP lying on its side, albeit an angular version.  As with proto-cuneiform, most comparable symbols are oriented at a 90 degree angle to those in the Indus script because of the distinct way that the scribes held the tablet in Mesopotamia and presumably in Elam (as shown by this same orientation on monuments and statues).  This is thus the standard way in which the signs are printed nowadays as well.  But there is also a third "V" shaped sign which is oriented the way our letter is (M343~d).  This sign has, in addition to its shape, an indented circle attached to the left end.

"U"-shaped curves are relatively common in the rock of North America and the "V"-shape occurs as well (Newcomb 1996: 193, Pl. 143 no. 22 A; 194, Pl. 145 no. 24 E).  In the first illustration referenced here, a single small "U" shape is located beside twelve dots, six over six.  Several chevrons (or upside-down "V" shapes) are nearby.  In the second illustration, there are two small "V" shapes below many large tally marks.  The same kinds of markings appear further west as well (Heizer and Baumhoff 1984: 110 fig. 47 a; 125 fig. 62 a).  In the first illustration, both a large and a small "U" shape occur near a rayed circle.  In the second a "V" shape appears to the right of a long-stemmed figure.

As for Australia, the "U" shape can represent a person sitting or a windbreak in the art of people of the central desert (Flood 1997: 158).  There is a "U" engraved alongside that of some giant bird tracks at Eucolo Creek, South Australia (1997: 112).  There is a "V" shape in Mooraa Cave, Mount Gambier region, South Australia (1997: 89).  Curves also appear in a modern painting in the Papunya Tula style by Billy Stockman Tjapaltjari (Flood 1997: 157).  These curves are oriented in a variety of directions, so one might describe them as CEES, BACK CEES, CUPS and ROOFS.  In fact though, all represent the same thing in this painting.  All fifteen curves are witchetty grubs.  Thus, in this case at least, it would be a mistake to distinguish them based on orientation.

When it comes to the Indus script, we don't know at the outset whether orientation will prove to be significant or not.  In some scripts it is.  In the English alphabet, for example, the letters are often distinguished by orientation, as fact that is lost on small children trying to learn them for the first time.  Certain tots of my acquaintance confused quite a few of the letters of our alphabet, once upon a time.  "R" was one little girl's favorite letter, since it was in her name.  "P" was obviously a close relative, lacking only a leg.  Clearly the small (non-capital) letters identical to "P" included the following: p q d b.  She eventually added "a" to this list because the magnetic letters we had stuck to the refrigerator had a form of small "a" that looked like the top of the small "p" (or "q"), lacking only the tail.  It was, in this little girl's estimation, the baby "R."  This, of course, is a child's error.  She eventually grew out of it and learned to read quite well.  But the naive scholar -- which means all scholars at this point since we don't know how to "read" this script -- does not know which symbols to group together and which to separate.  We have nothing to go on but intuition.  If we lump together the signs which resemble one another, we may be committing the same error as the little girl who made "a" the baby of her favorite letter "R."

Let that be a lesson to us all!

And that brings us back to the CUP.  Most scholars consider the "U" shapes and "V" shapes to be the same symbol, especially since there seem to be quite a few examples in the corpus that are in between.  But then there are those two oddballs, L217 and M1425B.  They have curved sides and "V" bottoms.  Should they be classed up CUPS or as separate signs?  In inscription L217, this odd "CUP" occurs very close to a MAN sign, while a little further away there is another CUP, this time a more standard U (wider at the top than our letter).  If we follow standard practice, we will classify the oddball sign as a separate, independent symbol, giving it a number and name of its own, because of this fact -- it appears in an inscription alongside the regular CUP. 

The fact that there are only two instances of the new symbol might give us pause, except that there are a great many signs that occur only once, twice, or a similarly small number of times.  This is a characteristic feature of this type of script.  And what type is that?  The fact that the majority of signs appear fewer than 100 times is significant.  It means that statistics are useless as far as discovering anything about this class of signs.  This is not my opinion.  It is not a ruling made by some law court.  It is the way that statistics work, as anyone who has taken a single course in statistics must know.  Statistics only work when there is sufficient data.  It's as if you wanted to discover how often you get heads when you flip a coin and you only flip your coin once or twice.  If you only do it once, you may get heads, you may not.  That doesn't tell you anything about how often you are likely to get heads, does it?  Suppose you get heads on your one-time coin toss.  You can describe this as 100% heads, since of the times you flipped your coin, you got heads.  Does that mean you'll get heads 100% of the time you flip any coin?  Certainly not.  The odds haven't really changed from what they were all the time.  But somebody who knows nothing of coins, somebody reading about your 100% heads result may misinterpret this to mean just that. 

That long digression was only intended to point out the obvious to those who have never studied statistics.  The point is, although statistical studies have been published concerning the Indus script, these sorts of things cannot decipher the script on their own because of the nature of that script.  That nature is what I described earlier.  The majority of signs appear less than 100 times and thus are not amenable to statistical studies.

There are two proto-scripts that make especially good parallels to the Indus script.  These are proto-cuneiform and proto-Elamite.  In both of these also, the majority of signs appear fewer than 100 times.  Proto-Elamite is not understood completely.  It died out without evolving into true writing.  Proto-cuneiform, on the other hand, eventually developed into a full writing system.  But as proto-cuneiform, it was NOT a fully developed writing system.  There is a distinction, an important one to a linguist.  It is not an insult, not a slander, to label a script a proto-writing system.  The symbol system of the Mixtecs was a proto-writing system and that of the Aztecs was as well.  In modern times, the Na Xi of China had a proto-writing system used alongside Chinese.  Most linguists consider Rongorongo from Easter Island to have been a proto-writing system.  The linguist I.J. Gelb coined the term semasiography for such systems.  It is not an elegant term and it does not come trippingly off the lips, but in a way it is an improvement over the clumsy expression "proto-writing" system.  The latter expression seems to imply that a given symbol system wants to become something else, that it is somehow lacking.  But people who use a "proto-writing" system don't necessarily want it to be something else.  And they don't necessarily consider it imperfect.  In fact, they may be perfectly happy with it.  The fact that the Indus script remained what it was for several hundred years suggests that the Harappans were indeed happy with it as it was.

That said, let us continue by discussing the upside-down "U" shape.  I will term it the ROOF, numbering it II8.  It is also KP131 and Fairservis designates it K-15, considering it a fingernail mark, "number unit for metal (found on metal objects in multiple groups)."  It does not appear in Wells' list.  As Fairservis observed, as an independent symbol, it does not show up in the inscriptions on seals or tablets, or in the graffiti on pots.  But I have observed it twice on copper objects, a single ROOF on K121B, and three stacked ROOFS on C40A.

In Egyptian hieroglyphs, this ROOF shape originally represented a hobble for cattle (V20).  It was used in the word "stables" which was pronounced mdwt.  Thus, it came to represent the first two consonants in that word, md.  In hieroglyphs its most common use is as the numeral 10 which was pronounced mdw.  Since I studied Egyptian hieroglyphs once upon a time, my first thought on seeing this sign was, "Aha! the medj!"  It may be that other scholars such as Fairservis, who propose that the Indus ROOF is a numeral or a measure, are also thinking of the Egyptian medj.  The Indus ROOF is not the only symbol which appears multiple times within a single inscription, after all, and not all of these repeating symbols are proposed as numerals by scholars.  That's one point to tuck away in memory.  The other is the fact that the independent ROOF appears only on metal objects.  There are other signs that only appear in the graffiti on pots.  Some signs, being singletons, only appear on seals.  Well, when there are a great many singletons and signs that appear only twice, etc., there are going to be signs with oddly restricted distribution, it seems to me.  I'm not sure what to make of this sort of thing.  But that may be worth filing away as possibly important.

The ROOF appears in Old Chinese as mi2, "to cover" (Wieger 1965: 95).  This is now the 16th radical.  If the ends of the ROOF are allowed to curve outward a bit, the character becomes ji1, "seat, stool," now the 14th radical (1965: 63).  Or, if we put a short vertical on top of the ROOF, we have mien1, which represents a hut or dwelling, the 40th radical, as in sung4 (which has the tree character underneath) "hut of wood" (1965: 101).

Luwian, as noted earlier, uses the ROOF to denote the vowel i.  Proto-cuneiform represented a type of garment or cloth with the ROOF symbol, according to Denise Schmandt-Besserat (1996: 75).  Proto-Elamite had M343~h, an angular version which resembles the chevron with a circular indentation on the left end.

This shape appears in North American rock art and in Australia (Newcomb 1996: 193 Pl. 144 No. 23-C; Heizer and Baumhoff 1984: 160 fig. 97 b; Flood 1997: 256).  In the latter case, the "horseshoe" shapes appear in a rock shelter on Little Kennedy River near Laura, Cape York Peninsula, in Queensland.  There are also instances of the reversed "cupped cups" motif.  This would be described as "roofs under roof," I suppose (Pine Gap Reserve near Alice Springs, Northern Territory in Flood 1997: 204).

As a final note on CUPS and ROOFS, I will mention that these are among the entoptic forms that appear in Paleolithic cave art.  When in the first stage of trance, before true hallucinations begin, a shaman begins to "see" things which are actually generated from within the eye or the optic system generally (see e.g. Lewis-Williams 2002).  These include nested curves (CEES, BACK CEES, CUPS, ROOFS), rayed circles, zigzags, lines, dots, concentric rings, spirals, lattices, and some less well attested forms.  Theoretically there are 15 of these entoptic forms, a number I have some doubts about -- but we need get into that at this point.  The point now is that I have migraines regularly and see CUPS and ROOFS among what my doctors have blandly termed "visual disturbances" associated with the pain.  A migraine isn't quite the same thing as a shaman's trance, but I can attest to the fact that it can indeed become an "altered state."

The illustration this time comes from Mixtec proto-writing.  It shows the so-called "AO" sign, a complex symbol that includes elements that vaguely resembles the capital letter "A" with a smaller "O" woven through it.  What interests us here is the fact that the "A" element slightly resembles the ROOF sign in the Indus script.  However, the "A" or ROOF is not an independent element in the Mixtec system, only part of a much more complicated glyph. 

The second illustration is a commercial Navaho sand painting which lacks many of the features that characterize those used by the Navaho for healing.  It has no encircling guardian figure, for example, a figure which would ordinarily enclose the main painting on three sides in a roughly "U" shape, leaving the east open.  Neither the Mixtec nor the Navaho example represents a fully developed writing system.  Nevertheless, both are fascinating, worthy of study, and perhaps can be used to understand the Indus "script" a bit better.