Variant: bird / feather

·    Subvariants (2):

o A. Full (bird head):

§ A longish (upper) beak, with a distinct small hook at the end.

·      One of the Tokovinine lectures says this is a vulture = lost reference.

§ A tiny dot for a nostril, usually at the top but occasionally at the tip of the beak (the former being closer to reality).

§ Eye – dot with (optionally):

·      A tick on the left of the dot.

·      A tick on the right of the dot.

§ “Soundwaves” to the right of the beak, occupying most of the bottom right of the glyph, all the way to the right wall.

§ A feather as forehead ornament – a tripartite glyph:

·      Bottom: washer.

·      Middle: a semicircle or 3/4 circle.

·      Top: a longish, “leaf-like” element, (often) pointed at the end, with multiple spines running along the long axis.

§ Interestingly, all the examples from the MHD and Bonn Catalogs have an element which resembles the “bone property marker” in the top right.

·      A search in MHD on “blcodes contains BV3” yields 70 hits (2024-10-18).

·      Visual inspection reveals that about 10 of them have such a “bone” property marker – a significant but not overwhelmingly large number.

·      The top right is where a “feather” is often to be found, in other bird-head glyphs, but it’s unclear if there’s any relationship to the “bone property marker” seen here. Occurring in only 10 out of 70 hits, it can’t be considered to be a distinguishing characteristic of the full variant of ti.

o B. Reduced (feather): Just the feather of the full form:

§ The middle element of the feather can have a reinforcement on three of the four sides (in the direction away from the washer). This reinforcement is generally absent in the full form, probably because the “feather” is so small that it’s pointless to add a decorative element like the reinforcement.

§ Do not confuse this variant with the visually similar SAK:

·      The syllabogram ti has only one “leaf”.

·      The logogram SAK has two or three “leaves”.