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Gestures
Connected with the Origin of Writing
A typical gesture for night
is as follows: Place the flat hands,
horizontally, about two feet apart,
move them quickly in an upward curve
toward one
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another until the right lies
across the left. "Darkness covers all." See Fig. 312, page
489. The conception of covering executed by delineating the
object covered beneath the middle point of an arch or curve,
appears also clearly in the Egyptian characters for night,
Fig. 144 (Champollion, Dict., p. 3).
The upper part of the character is taken separately to form
that for sky (see page 372, infra). |
| The Egyptian figurative and linear characters, Figs. 145 and
146 (Champollion, Dict., p. 28), for calling upon
and
invocation,
also used as an interjection, scarcely require the quotation
of an Indian sign, being common all over the world. The gesture sign made by several tribes for many is
as follows: Both hands, with spread and slightly curved
fingers, are held pendent about two feet apart before the
thighs; then bring them toward one another, horizontally,
drawing them upward as they come together. (Absaroka
I; Shoshoni and Banak I; Kaiowa I; Comanche
III; Apache II; Wichita II.) |
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"An accumulation of objects." This
may be the same motion indicated by the Egyptian character,
Fig. 147, meaning to gather together (Champollion,
Dict., p. 459). The Egyptian character, Fig. 148, which in its linear form
is
represented
in Fig. 149, and meaning to go, to come, locomotion,
is |
| presented to show readers
unfamiliar with hieroglyphics how a
corporeal action may be included in
a linear character without being
obvious or at least certain, unless
it should be made clear by
comparison with the full figurative
form or by other means. This linear
form might be noticed many times
without certainty or |
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perhaps suspicion that it
represented the human legs and feet
in the act of walking. The same
difficulty, of course, as also the
same prospect of success by careful
research, attends the tracing of
other corporeal motions which more
properly come under the head of
gesture signs. |
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Sign Language
Among North American Indians Compared with
that Among Other Peoples and Deaf-Mutes,
1881
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