Fig. 1000.—Gesture sign for drink.
Another common Indian gesture sign for water to drink—I want to drink—is: “Hand brought downward past the mouth with loosely extended fingers, palm toward the face.” This appears in the Mexican character for drink, b, in Fig. 999, taken from Pipart (a). Water, i. e., the pouring out of water with the drops falling or about to fall, is shown in Fig. 999, c, taken from the same author (b), being the same arrangement of them as in the Indian gesture-sign for rain, shown in Fig. 1002, the hand, however, being inverted. Rain in the Mexican picture-writing is sometimes shown by small circles inclosing a dot, as in the last two designs, but not connected together, each having a short line upward marking the line of descent. Several other pictographs for rain are given below.
Fig. 1001.—Water, Egyptian.
With the gesture sign for drink may be compared Fig. 1001, the Egyptian goddess Nu in the sacred sycamore tree, pouring out the water of life to the Osirian and his soul represented as a bird, in Amenti, from a funereal stelē in Cooper’s Serpent Myths (b).
The common Indian gesture for river or stream—water—is made by passing the horizontal flat hand, palm down, forward and to the left from the right side in a serpentine manner.
The Egyptian character for the same is d in Fig. 999, taken from Champollion’s Dictionary (b). The broken line is held to represent the movement of the water on the surface of the stream. When made with one line less angular and more waving it means water. It is interesting to compare with this the identical character in the syllabary invented by a West African negro, Mormoru Doalu Bukere, for water, e, in Fig. 999, mentioned by Dr. Tylor (b).
The abbreviated Egyptian sign for water as a stream is f, in Fig. 999, taken from Champollion, loc. cit., and the Chinese for the same is as in g, same figure.
In the picture writing of the Ojibwa the Egyptian abbreviated character, with two lines instead of three, appears with the same signification.