Tuesday, August 29, 2023

Amazing Chinese Characters (612) Emperor Yao - 尧(堯)

 The shell bone script of Emperor Yao (2324 - 2255 BC) is

The top are three characters of Soil (Post 223), the bottom is character Unexpected (Post 611). What is this? It is an ancient kiln as the one below,


which is used to fire brick, or pottery. The kiln is a small hill in a flat ground. The bottom is a person carrying heavy adobe bricks on his back into the low kiln. To carry multiple bricks, put the adobe bricks on a wood board, then put the board on kiln worker's shoulder or head. Therefore, we see a person with a flat board with many adobe bricks on, which is what we see in the script of the character.

To make bricks in the old time, still similar today, first is to make adobe bricks as the following


next is to load them in kiln

then burn them with fire


This is a brief procedure of making bricks with kiln.
Right now we know the three characters Soil - 土 are adobe bricks. The character means to make bricks.
It is said that Emperor Yao was kiln worker and brick making expert before he became emperor. People used his job as his name. Because he was emperor, his name couldn't be used in any other situation, therefore, the character is only used for his name, the original meaning of making brick disappeared. 99%+ people don't know the character's original meaning.

The small seal script of character Emperor Yao is

Similar to big seal script. The top 

are adobe bricks. I think that there could be big seal script of 垚, but I didn't find. 
The bottom is character Unexpected - 兀.

The clerical script of character Emperor Yao is
Similar to older scripts.

The simplified song typeface of character Emperor Yao is 


The top become character Dagger-Axe - 戈 (Post 80), nothing to do with adobe bricks. It is unclear where this is from.

The Pinyin of the character is Yao2.





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