Amazing Chinese Characters (778) The fifth of the ten Heavenly Stems - 戊

Shell bone of character of the fifth of the ten Heavenly Stems is

which is an ancient weapon. We can compare it with character 戈 (Post 80)

The fifth of the ten Heavenly Stems has extra curve on the top left, which could be a knife. Therefore it has two parts: the knife on top left and the dagger like on the top. 

The original meaning of the character is weapon, but it became to be "the fifth of the ten Heavenly Stems" about 3300 years ago in Shang dynasty. Why it was chosen to be used in Heavenly Stems? No documents explain the reason. 

People know it as the fifth of the ten Heavenly Stems more than as weapon now because that weapon had been not used long long time ago,

The bronze script of the character of the fifth of the ten Heavenly Stems is

The left knife blade is straight, the right top is the sharp fork, and the bottom is the handle. The right part becomes big curved, because it is easier to switch from using the top fork to using the side knife.

The small seal script of the fifth of the ten Heavenly Stems is

The left shield now is not connected the horizontal bar, which is not real no matter it is a shield or a knife. The small seal script is changed to be no connection to older scripts, and lost the pictography of the character.

The clerical script of the fifth of the ten Heavenly Stems is

Similar to small seal script.

The pinyin of character 戊 is Wu4.