1. The first visual impression of hahe glyphs is certainly not evincing the picture of 'to surround'. Instead it appears to be the opposite, at least if we consider the two symbols of tic-tac-toe:

X O

A zero or the letter O can be seen as a circumference (which surrounds an interior area). According to Wikipedia the game tic-tac-toe originates from ancient Egypt.

Wilkinson illustrates the use of senet, a variant of checkers, with a scene from a game played between lion and gazelle:

Senet may have illustrated how life after death was dependent upon winning in a game of chance against the dark forces. Maybe it helped if you crossed your fingers. Otherwise you were bound to be engulfed.

The lion surely represents the light side, and therefore the gazelle must be his dark opponent. The dark side gazelle is sitting on what looks like a hahe sign. But the lion is not sitting on a zero sign, instead it seems to be a moon crescent, the inside of which is divided horizontally in two halves (a sign which is also shown in his ear). Maybe it means 8, a sign of successfully moving on past the temporal death, like the Moon. But the moon crescent is the tail of the lion. And he is not sitting on his tail. Instead it is a chair similar to the Chinese hieroglyph for sun:

2. If the hahe sign refers to the dark side of time, then the idea of surround (hahe) could refer to how a mummy is made into a bundle, hahi.

When the great light in the sky (Sun, Moon, or other luminary) disappears for a while it can be described as if the light had been enwrapped in a black cloth.

Sunday, according to the text of H, has a glyph (rau hei) which seems to illustrate how in nighttime Sun is like a mummy:

Hb9-17	Hb9-18	Hb9-19	Hb9-20	Hb9-21

The ordinal number for Hb9-19 counted from Ha1-1 is 1079 and 1079 / 3 = 359.67, i.e. Hb9-19 apparently could be denoting the end of the last day of a year with 360 days.

The beginning of the Mayan calendar has 3 month signs which exhibit what looks like hahe signs:

1 Pop	2 Uo	3 Zip
3 * 20 = 60 days

In the beginning there is no light. The light is 'barred':

'... When it was evident that the years lay ready to burst into life, everyone took hold of them, so that once more would start forth - once again - another (period of) fifty-two years. Then (the two cycles) might proceed to reach one hundred and four years. It was called 'One Age' when twice they had made the round, when twice the times of binding the years had come together. 

Behold what was done when the years were bound - when was reached the time when they were to draw the new fire, when now its count was accomplished. First they put out fires everywhere in the country round. And the statues, hewn in either wood or stone, kept in each man's home and regarded as gods, were all cast into the water. Also (were) these (cast away) - the pestles and the (three) hearth stones (upon which the cooking pots rested); and everywhere there was much sweeping - there was sweeping very clear. Rubbish was thrown out; none lay in any of the houses ...'

3. The use of X and O in tic-tac-toe could be connected with a world-view which saw the cycles of time as a great hour-glass form:

The picture is from Hamlet's Mill and shows how the precession of the equinoxes slowly moves the frame of time in a cycle. Although the ancients did not have the hour-glass they certainly had its form.

The two cycles, one in the north and one in the south, are interconnected as if they were the bottom cicles of two cones, one standing upright and one upside down. The picture is in Hamlet's Mill associated with the peculiar form of Mount Meru (the world mountain):

The earliest hourglass appears in the 1338 fresco Allegory of Good Government by Ambrogio Lorenzetti. The woman holding the hourglass is Temperance.

Alternatives to sand are powdered eggshell and powdered marble. Hourglasses were an early dependable, reusable and accurate measure of time. The rate of flow of the sand is independent of the depth in the upper reservoir, and the instrument will not freeze in cold weather.

From the 15th century onwards, they were being used in a range of applications at sea, in the church, in industry and in cookery. During the voyage of Ferdinand Magellan around the globe, his vessels kept 18 hourglasses per ship. It was the job of a ship's page to turn the hourglasses and thus provide the times for the ship's log. Noon was the reference time for navigation, which did not depend on the glass, as the sun would be at its zenith. Because of its symmetry, graphic signs resembling an hourglass are seen in the art of cultures which never encountered such objects. Vertical pairs of triangles joined at the apex are common in Native American art; both in North America, where it can represent, for example, the body of the Thunderbird or (in more elongated form) an enemy scalp, and in South America, where it is believed to represent a Chuncho jungle dweller.

In Zulu textiles they symbolise a married man, as opposed to a pair of triangles joined at the base, which symbolise a married woman. Neolithic examples can be seen among Spanish cave paintings.  Observers have even given the name 'hourglass motif' to shapes which have more complex symmetry, such as a repeating circle and cross pattern from the Solomon Islands:

Hourglass also refers to a body shape of women. In this shape bust and hip are significantly large with narrow waist resembling the shape of an hourglass. A common measurement of shape is 36 24 36. The three sizes are the circumferences of bust, waist and hips; usually rendered as three sizes: xx-yy-zz in centimeters or inches. In many demographics in the western world, the ideal sizes for a woman are said to be 36-24-36 ('90-60-90' - the exact conversion in cm would be 91-61-91 cm).

(Source Wikipedia)

4. The letter X denoting the unknown can therefore be explained as due to this sign being used as the opposite of the sign of the eye (which once also by the Chinese was drawn as a circle with a black spot in its middle - the pupil).

In the dark the eyes are helpless. Nothing can be seen under the dark cloth. Uncertainty must rule there. And the 'outcome' is a game of chance.

The form of the circular eye in the sky is all-knowing - it can see everything below it. Possibly the abode of this eye of light was regarded as the circular top of the upside down cone of time, a place where nothing changed.

Moon, on the other hand, was closer to the earth and she obviously went through all the changes possible. She symbolized life.

The ancient Egyptians regarded the region of the polar circle as something radically different from the rest of the sky. The stars inside this region never went down, they were always hanging there above. They were eternal and could always be seen.

The entrance to the dark underworld maybe was written by vaha kai in the rongorongo system (and the exit by a reversed vaha kai). If so, then we can expect hahe glyphs to be found close to vaha kai glyphs:

Between the 'ears' we are inside the 'skull' and there is no light. Or there is a chaotic battle between the different shades of shadows. We are living in a cave and the shadows on the walls are not true beings, they are all in our imaginations.