4. Probably the 'eating gesture' of a.m. sun is a sign originating from the kai glyph type:
What is nourishing the sun? Whatever it is mother nature has her rules: What you take you must - sooner or later - return, or in the words of Ogotemmêli: 'The rays drink up the little waters of the earth, the shallow pools, making them rise, and then descend again in rain.' Then, leaving aside the question of water, he summed up his argument: 'To draw up and then return what one had drawn - that is the life of the world' ... If we reverse the 'eating gesture' it ought to mean the process when sun returns what he has taken. The top parts in Ga2-25--26 exemplify 'reversed eating gestures':
The glyphs can therefore be labelled 'fire generators', and their appearance around new year, when a new 'fire' (sun, year) is to be alighted, appears to be appropriate. However, the 'fingers' in Ga2-25--26 are strictly speaking not 'reversed eating gestures' - they are oriented upwards and not to the right. Instead, a truly 'reversed eating gesture' is exemplified in Ab8-28:
Here the meaning is not 'fire generator' but evidently diminishing ('anti-growing') light. Ordinal number 29 in the following glyph means 'dark'. It is a hoea (instrument for tattooing) glyph and it is normally oriented, not reversed (meaning light) as in Ab4-69:
|