panicle

Panicle is a  cluster of flowers, (berries, seeds) arranged at the end of a stem such as oats. If the main branch zig-zags for each flower stem then the panicle is raceme. A proper panicle is open, compact or intermediate, if tightly packed and dense then the panicle is considered a spike such as wheat and rice.

You can expect the hieroglyphic symbols for basic language sounds to be pictures of basic things in nature surrounding the early Egyptians who devised the written language, part of their immediate and intimate environment. For example you can guess "water" right off for pretty much any culture close to nature in hieroglyphic or painted on a teepee or anywhere. (sometimes it's a curly-cue, and splash strokes in kanji) However the Egyptian symbol for "i" sound and "y" when doubled is baffling to both students and to professionals because the texts available are wrong on this rather important instance. Everyone learns this specific language building block incorrectly. Gardiner himself describes it as flowering reed. The esteemed James Allen and Manley & Collier too describe the symbol as a reed leaf.

It's confusing. They are confused.

There are reeds and sedges depicted in hieroglyphics and in Egyptian art. Papyrus is a reed, but nothing in the stages of papyrus resembles this hieroglyph. We can also expect the reed or sedge or grass to appear as an element of the vignette as art and not as words or letters or sounds, just the surface meaning as a reed (that happens to also be hieroglyphic) and depicted somewhere on walls as part of a story, and it is. [lion, ramses iii, medinet habu] The patch of this type of reed is behind the lion and we see the shape is the grass panicle and not any reed leaf.

The symbol for "i" is the panicle of one of three Egyptian tall grass species with heavy dense panicles that are blown by the wind to the side so that they look like a feather. (Another hieroglyph actually is a feather, the feather of Maat, an ostrich feather.) The stalks that the panicle grows on is useful resource all throughout the area even today. The tall stalks are hollow. like weaker bamboo. Lashed together they can be formed into rafts and into boats. Some of the boats quite large. Some species are used for arrows.

The leaves are fodder for animals. Oddly, one grass species is named Phrygmites australis obviously taxonomical placed well after ancient Egyptians used the plant. Phragmites has a nicely shaped panicle, it could be the Egyptian hieroglyphic "i." Were you to look you'd go, yeah, that's the one alright. Arundo donax is another Egyptian tall grass species and were you to look at that you'd go, oh yeah, now we're talking, that's the one. And then you look at Saccharum spondaneum and you go, c'mon now, are you kidding me, white? That has to be it.

Although simple as can be it has never been so easy to draw the blown panicle due to the mystery behind it. Without really understanding what it is the problem is getting the lines just right. Doubly difficult with two side by side. Something is always off, just a tad but that tiny bit wrong throws off the whole thing, too fat, too heavy looking, too leaned over, taper is wrong, rarely does it come out right first time without some kind of correction. But now that its origin is understood then drawing it should be easy. Stalk first, blown by the wind, then the tapering panicle also blown by the wind.

It's so romantic. Imagining Egyptians floating by on their reed boats pasts these clusters and clumps as through a garden.

Now whenever I see these things sticking up in phrases, and they're everywhere, doubled for names like "Mary," beloved of something or someone, the rudimentary hoe that I showed you plus two of these reeds standing up like a clump in nature. It's beautiful. This combination is seen in names all the time. And now when I see them I'll see also the ancient people's  fondness for the things all around them, the constant sight of clusters of these spectacular plants.

Let's draw it again for the millionth time, now with the power of actually knowing what we're doing. 

Saccharum spontaneum
photo my paper.pchome.co.tw
photo pixabay.com
reed boat gb.fotolibra.com