Variant: stylized

·    Features – a tripartite glyph with:

o Left – an ovalish / rectangular element, with:

§ Reinforcement of the ceiling and (optionally) left wall (and even more optionally, right wall)).

§ A row of three or more small, non-touching dots (canonically three, but sometimes more).

o Middle:

§ A u=shaped “bracket” – a u rotated 90 degrees anticlockwise.

§ The u has, typically, reinforcement, either just at the “bottom” of the u (on the right because of rotation), or “bottom” and both walls.

o Right:

§ A left and right scroll/feeler, each with its own protector.

§ As with other occurrences of a similar element in other contexts, the feelers themselves can “degenerate” to just single ticks (TOK.p9.r2.c5, 0057st). Alternatively, the feelers with protectors may manifest as double washers (JM) or double u-brackets (MHD.3M6.1).

·    Further comments:

o The feature description above is from left to right, for a horizontal orientation, but this is a rotatable glyph, is also be found in a vertical orientation (e.g., TOK.p9.r2.c5, MHD.3M6.1&2, 0057st, T57ac) with the described elements going from bottom to top.

o T57f is an unusual form, with an additional scroll-like element on the left.

o While this is classified as a “rotatable” glyph, in the sense that it can occur in any of the four positions (left, above, right, below) relative to a “main sign”, it isn’t fully rotatable, in that the feelers never point downwards. I’m unsure if they point to the left, but all the examples above point to the right.

·    Do not confuse this with the visually similar tu:

o si has three small non-touching dots in a row.

o tu has cross hatched area (with optional face).

Variant: representational

·    Features – a vertically rectangular, tripartite glyph consisting of:

o Bottom: a “washer” – representing the body of a beetle or snail?

o Middle: a 3/4-circle – representing the head of a beetle or snail?

o Top: two “feelers” – representing the feelers of a beetle or snail?

·    Iconographic origin:

o The “representational” variant is codical and therefore postdates the “abstract” form, which is Classic This means that there can be no question of the representational form “evolving” into the more abstract form. Nevertheless, it seems plausible to me that the abstract variant is a stylized form of the body of a beetle or snail.

o The MHD Catalog doesn’t venture a guess in this (or any other direction), giving only “?” in the “picture” field.

Variant: rat head

·    There is a rare variant, featuring a rat’s head.

·    Sergei Vepretskii: this [= the “rat head” glyph] is in fact a very rare form of si, making YAX Lintel 10 D6 usij uchit (u)ch’ab = “the child of”. This is cited in Kettunen&Helmke-RoB.p34.pdfp34.fig65i.

·    MHD statistics. A search in “Classic - Blocks” with:

o “blcodes contains 3M6” gives 377 hits:

§ MHD doesn’t distinguish the stylized variant from the representational one, so the 377 hits cover both variants.

§ This means that the number of occurrences of the stylized variant is less than 377. Nevertheless, it doesn’t overcount them too much, as the representational variant is known to be quite rare also.

o “blcodes contains APC” gives 15 hits:

§ This too might be overcounting, because quite a number of these hits are APC? rather than pure APC.

In any case, it confirms Sergei’s explanation that the “rat head” variant is quite rare.