Submissive woman or bound slave: interpreting oracle bone forms as a Rorschach test

January 20, 2026 @ 8:43 pm · Filed by under Etymology, Historical linguistics, Writing systems

« previous post | next post »

We've been discussing the oracle bone form (late 2nd millennium BC) of nǚ女 ("woman; female"):

(WP)

I've always felt that it shows the profile of a submissive, kneeling female figure with her arms crossed in front of her (I say this after examining scores of variants of OB forms of 女).

Lately, however, some scholars have interpreted the oracle bone graph in radically different ways, e.g., the figure is a slave with arms bound in front of or behind him.

If that is the case, how do we get to "woman; female", which nǚ 女 (during the last three millennia), both by itself and as the radical (Kangxi no. 38) of hundreds (681) of other graphs having to do with women or feminine affairs / characteristics as it has indubitably signified during the last three millennia?

So I asked Axel Schuessler, the foremost etymologist of Old Sinitic, how he would interpret the oracle bone forms of nǚ 女.  He replied:

Chinese writing is sometimes like a Rorschach-test, everyone can see something different in the characters.
 
Here is my take: the OB graph shows a figure seen from the side. The figure is kneeling. This breast interpretation has never convinced me. What I see is a shoulder with arms, elbows extended to the sides. The top line of this ‘breast’ configuration shows the shoulder (with the stroke starting at top right) with the woman’s right arm curving down around her torso, the bottom line shows the left arm curving around the torso (again: from a side perspective). The arms/hands meet in front of the figure. This is exactly the pose found in theater performances when a woman is facing a person of authority showing respect, kneeling, arms extended with elbows out, hands coming together in front of her. In these gestures the hands wind up on top of each other or curled together like fists, if memory serves. Perhaps one can  also find this position in paintings. I don’t see any hint of bound hands or slavery. 
 
The graph for ‘mother’ 母, with the two dots that are really supposed to prove the breast theory. Again, I see this completely differently. Sometimes, a graph is created by using an existing one and then adding a dot or dots, strokes as diacritic for distinction. Sometimes the dot has the purpose of filling an area, like in 日, 月, 本. So 母 has the dots to indicate that 女 ‘woman is not intended, but ‘mother’. 
 
Anyway, this is a good Rorschach test.

—–

PS: à propos graphs being like Rorschach tests: the interpretation says sometimes more about the viewer that the graph itself. This graph meaning ‘woman’ makes people (naturally) look for anatomical markers, i.e. breasts; those living in a modern left ideology look for oppression of women everywhere and promptly find it, hence woman as slave.

I wish I could find paintings or photographs where you see a woman in exactly this kneeling pose with elbow pointed outward, hands joined, that made me immediately think that this is exactly what the OB have captured with a few strokes.

I think this is the sort of painting Axel had in mind:

(source)

Selected readings

 

January 20, 2026 @ 8:43 pm · Filed by under Etymology, Historical linguistics, Writing systems


30 Comments

  1. Jonathan Smith said,

    January 21, 2026 @ 12:19 am

    You can't gaze at a single glyph; these are arms because they do arm stuff in other contexts (OBI are like XKCD: more-or-less-consistently-depicted figures hanging out and doing stuff.)

    E.g. some glyphs (one glyph?) combine what let's call 'woman' ("女") and what let's call 'infant' ("子") interacting, not in most cases simply juxtaposed (identify it with "好" if you must.) There is a glyph clearly depicting breast-feeding that also has 'woman' and 'infant' — arms still there but encircling 'infant', go figure… There are glyphs where 'infant' drops from 'woman's' hindquarters in various orientations with some juice… sometimes the additions to the "母" figure attach to the upper body so I'm gonna say breasts… etc.

    A useful caveat is the OBI characters were already old and people were individuals, so there is no reason to think there were always consistent and conservative understandings of depictive intent.

  2. Yves Rehbein said,

    January 21, 2026 @ 3:24 am

    Knowing the equivalent cuneiform character is rather explicit, I remark doubt about the interpretation of the Oracle Bone Inscription. 母 is more vivid, though the Wiktionary notes: "In the early oracle bone texts both words 女 […] and 母 were written as 女". See similar 也 from Bronze Inscriptions to Shuowen Jiezi: 許慎《說文》：「也，女陰也。象形。，秦刻石也字。」直指也字的本義乃女姓生殖器官之象形。這一點段玉裁注解從之：「此篆女陰是本義，假借為語詞，本無可疑者，而淺人妄疑之……」https://humanum.arts.cuhk.edu.hk/Lexis/lexi-mf/search.php?word=%E4%B9%9F

  3. Philip Taylor said,

    January 21, 2026 @ 4:52 am

    "the interpretation says sometimes more about the viewer that the graph itself. This graph meaning ‘woman’ makes people (naturally) look for anatomical markers, i.e. breasts; those living in a modern left ideology look for oppression of women everywhere and promptly find it, hence woman as slave" — I found that analysis very insightful.

  4. Mark Young said,

    January 21, 2026 @ 8:23 am

    I don't think that's quite the image Schuessler had in mind. When he described it I had a very clear picture in my mind. I wasn't able to find a still, but the image I had in mind flashes by very quickly at 0:19 in this video: https://youtu.be/3kBm9542m64?si=XsXEYe9vpYxi7xCB&t=19

  5. Philip Taylor said,

    January 21, 2026 @ 9:46 am

    Yes, that one (Mark's, that is) certainly has the elbows out, which I felt was missing from the earlier one. See also https://collections.artsmia.org/art/825/kneeling-figure-china

  6. Axel Schuessler said,

    January 21, 2026 @ 10:24 am

    I don't think that's quite the image Schuessler had in mind. When he described it I had a very clear picture in my mind. I wasn't able to find a still, but the image I had in mind flashes by very quickly at 0:19 in this video: https://youtu.be/3kBm9542m64?si=XsXEYe9vpYxi7xCB&t=19

    Exactly!

  7. Scott P. said,

    January 21, 2026 @ 11:07 am

    Sometimes the dot has the purpose of filling an area, like in 日, 月, 本. So 母 has the dots to indicate that 女 ‘woman is not intended, but ‘mother’.

    Is it just me or do 女 and 母 look nothing alike with or without the dots?

  8. Victor Mair said,

    January 21, 2026 @ 11:34 am

    This one, from Philip Taylor:

    https://collections.artsmia.org/art/825/kneeling-figure-china

  9. katarina said,

    January 21, 2026 @ 1:12 pm

    This nu 女 "woman, female" graph is an example of the genius of the graphic artist who designed it.

    It shows his wit. It is a witty graph, a portmanteau graph. We have portmanteau words like "smog" (combining "smoke" and "fog") and
    "brunch" ("breakfast" and "brunch"). This portmanteau graph combines depictions of "shoulder and arms" and "female breasts". The graph portrays the two distinctive visual features of a female– subservience (kneeling) and female breasts.
    If we deny that the upper part of the graph portrays female breasts(as well as shoulder and arms) then this graph would not be distinctively female. It could just as well portray a male because most males in ancient times had subservient roles in society, though dominant roles at home. The fact that the upper part of the graph represents female breasts is reinforced by the graph for mu 母 “mother", where the same graph "female" has two dots added to the breasts to represent the nipples, representing the distinctive role of a mother — to bear children and to suckle the infant.
    The 女 “woman" and 母 "mother" graphs are terse and witty.

    https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/File:母-oracle.svg

  10. Michael Vnuk said,

    January 21, 2026 @ 11:06 pm

    Although oracle bone script comes up in Language Log often, I have only just now looked it up. There are many puzzling and interesting things about the script, but two things stand out for me and I couldn’t find quick answers to them.

    (1) Oracle bone script seems to have its characters able to fit in a rectangular box taller than it is wide, whereas later Chinese characters fit in a square box. Why this rectangle and then why the switch to the square?

    (2) Why are many animal characters in oracle bone script rendered in, what seems to me, an unnatural position, with their feet directed towards to the left of the rectangle rather than towards the base? Is it simply to better fit in the rectangle or is there some other reason?

  11. Chris Button said,

    January 21, 2026 @ 11:53 pm

    I feel bound to comment since my earlier comment seems to have stimulated this post.

    … the interpretation says sometimes more about the viewer tha[n] the graph itself…

    … everyone can see something different in the characters…

    Any reasonable interpretation should incorporate two contextual considerations:

    1. The written context surrounding the use of the character
    2. The form of the character viewed within the context of the forms of other characters

    It's a shame how the oracle-bone inscriptions are often ignored when reconstructing Old Chinese. I encountered a similar issue with inscriptional Burmese when looking at Old Burmese reconstructions; it's easy to dismiss unfamiliar material.

    But it is better to ignore them than to propose fanciful interpretations devoid of context or to blindly cite old concordances.

    The figure is kneeling.

    It is the standard kneeling figure in countless inscriptional forms that have nothing to do with women. The addition of crossed arms produces 女, but there is nothing feminine about the shape from an inscriptional context.

    the figure is a slave with arms bound in front of or behind him

    To be clear, the form of 女 with arms crossed behind occurs as a component part of a small selection of graphs and may not simply be a variant. Fowler's (1989) study of the human form in the inscriptions notes that "in figurines of captives unearthed from the Shang site at Anyang, the male figures have their hands tied behind their backs, while the female figures have their hands tied in front of their bodies …"

    Still, no written evidence has been found yet for 女 meaning 奴 "slave/servant". So, the proposal remains pure speculation based on a possible association between 女 *nʳàɰˀ and 奴 *náɰ. The reconstruction of 奴 is notably simpler.

    If that is the case, how do we get to "woman; female" …

    The semantic shift is perfectly reasonable.
    – Old English wenċel "child, servant, slave" and wench
    – Old Khmer tai, noted in Axel Schuessler's dictionary, which Pou glosses as "female, woman, appelative for female servants"
    – Lithuanian vergas "slave" and Armenian varjak "female entertainer"

  12. Yves Rehbein said,

    January 22, 2026 @ 12:42 am

    @ Scott P., these are nearly identical though they do not look the same, three strokes drawn in the same order and crossing in the same way, save for the additional two center dots of 母 and except that 女 has one crossing less.

  13. bks said,

    January 22, 2026 @ 6:13 am

    I can't make the figure kneel because it's clearly squatting. But then the "arms" are a problem.

  14. David Y. said,

    January 22, 2026 @ 10:28 am

    I skimmed by this article without reading it yesterday, and thought it was a face with glasses.

  15. Condign Harbinger said,

    January 22, 2026 @ 12:08 pm

    If forced to interpret it as a human figure, I'd say it could be male or female, possibly a child. The head seems to have hair in a bunch at the back. The nose is up in the air, as are the arms. He or she is about to dive into a swimming pool.

  16. Philip Taylor said,

    January 22, 2026 @ 12:35 pm

    At the time that the Oracle Bone Inscriptions were inscribed, CH, would it not have been more probable that he/she/it[*] was about to dive into the ocean rather than into a swimming pool ?!
    ——–
    [*] Some scholars note the presence of eunuchs in China over 3,000 years ago, during the Shang dynasty (1766–1222 BC).

  17. Rachel Boughton said,

    January 22, 2026 @ 4:41 pm

    I agree that it's hard to see it as kneeling, it's rare that the feet and the "knees" are on the same level in the old bronze and oracle bone characters. I wonder also if the subservient side view may have been an interpretation that came along later (with a shift in the position of women) changing the character from a sinewy line with arms crossed https://www.zdic.net/zd/zx/jw/女 to a more prounounced backside and knees, usually squatting, sometimes kneeling. When I hold my arms in that position, arms forward, elbows bent with wrists crossed, I am in a position to hold something, perhaps a child, or to express a willingness to cradle or hold something.

    Also I am curious about the elbows bent which is the traditional neolithic goddess figurine's usual gesture, sometimes seen cradling the breasts.

  18. Lucas Christopoulos said,

    January 22, 2026 @ 9:01 pm

    "Some scholars note the presence of eunuchs in China over 3,000 years ago, during the Shang dynasty (1766–1222 BC)."

    I thought that they appeared during the Qin-Han Dynasties Imperial courts

  19. Lucas Christopoulos said,

    January 22, 2026 @ 9:19 pm

    Women: Accadian sinništum, Sumerian munus ()

    eunuch in Ancient Greek= Vεὐνή (eunḗ) = “bed”
    ἔχω (ékhō) = “to hold / guard” “guardian of the bed”

    Chinese= Taijian (太監) "High-ranking overseer"
    Akkadian: rab ša rēši () "chief eunuch / grand overseer"

  20. Lucas Christopoulos said,

    January 22, 2026 @ 9:23 pm

    the sign for women in Sumerian and Akkadian is very similar to the Chinese one
    https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/

  21. Yves Rehbein said,

    January 22, 2026 @ 9:58 pm

    By the way, another instance of this pose is 毓 as a more complete form of yù 育 (OC /*m-quk/ "breed, produce", Baxter–Sagart), which resembles Egyptian hieroglyph msj (Gardiner #B3, "give birth") – squatting in a way to give birth.

    毓: https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/毓

    B3: https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/%F0%93%81%92

    Childbirth positions: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Childbirth_positions

    These signs may easily be coincidince since it is such a natural position. That's a general problem because the drawing is either completely obvious so that any similarity is up to chance or it is not so obvious and therefore too uncertain to begin with. For example, B3 has a variant B4 wherein the protruding new born is replaced by hieroglyph ms (#F31, "born"), which is "three skins tied together". For the life of me I cannot explain that (n.b. the Lexikon Ägyptologie refers to some erotic association to fox skins).

    B4: https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/%F0%93%81%93

    However, as regards nǚ 女 and mǔ 母, note that the Egyptian uniliteral letter n is a zigzag line (#N35) commonly used as a preposition, but triplicated mw (#N35a, "ripples of water"), as is well known, is related to alphabetic M in Semitic mem vel sim. ("water"), which is not triplicated. Whereas our N is less obvious if a snake or else (cf. WP: "N"), I believe the similarity of M and N can hardly be coincidence. So that just made me think of 流.

    liú 流 (OC /*ru/ "flow") presents a striking piece of evidence as it is argued for 㐬: "The three lower lines represent amniotic fluid or hair. The interpretation as fluid is supported by the comparison of 旒 (liú) and 游 (yóu), originally variants of one another." https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/㐬

  22. Chas Belov said,

    January 23, 2026 @ 12:57 pm

    I am amazed that people can see so much in these characters. The one time in my life I received a Rorschach test, as an adolescent, I didn't see anything in any of the images. And I don't think I'm lacking in imagination. I appreciate abstract art for the patterns as well, not for any implicit meaning.

    @Yves Rehbein said

    "Knowing the equivalent cuneiform character is rather explicit,"

    Explicit as in "well drawn" or as in "sexually graphic"?

  23. Yves Rehbein said,

    January 25, 2026 @ 1:43 am

    @ Chas Belov, stick figures lack the plasticity that Rorschach test images have. The cuneiform is "well drawn" for the medium of wedges impressed into wet clay and there are older clay tokens which resemble it very well, but that's not what I meant, no. The oracle bone inscription is not drawn badly in comparison.

    @ Lucas Christopolous, font support for cuneiform is unfortunately still wanting. You are certainly refering to SAL [1, 2] munus ("woman"), sal ("fine, thin"). Since cuneiform is terribly ambiguous it is unclear if eme-sal is woman speech (a pro pos "Women's script wins in the end", LLOG 1/19/26) or better translated as delicate tongue. A better phonetic match for nǚ 女 would be nin (EREŠ), a ligature of SAL and TUG₂ ("cloth") meaning "lady" (Emesal gašan), "sister" (Emesal umun) or "lord" in divine names [3]. Yet, I am not able to make much of it.

    @ Chris Button, you must be aware of Takashima's little primer of Oracle Bone Inscriptions (2015). Exercise 1 glosses 奴 without comment. In Takashima 2020 (your citation s.v. Doulos, on LLOG 10/9/25) he admits that 奴 and 女 are not distinguished, but the sign in Ex. 1 (2015) is clearly marked.

  24. Victor Mair said,

    January 25, 2026 @ 8:40 am

    @Yves Rehbein

    Many thanks for your invaluable observations and references.

    See now also "Submissive woman or bound slave: interpreting oracle bone forms as a Rorschach test, part 2".

  25. Chris Button said,

    January 25, 2026 @ 9:54 am

    @Yves Rehbein

    I'm not seeing the Takashima reference. Do you have a page number?

  26. Yves Rehbein said,

    January 25, 2026 @ 3:07 pm

    @ Chris Button, yes, sorry, I wrote from memory and confused two or three things.

    Pages 158-9 (Zhōuyuán jiǎgủ kèci 周原甲骨刻辭 Piece 1), he does discuss an inscription and notes "forms of female figures with hair on top, to which the hand element is added, i.e. 妻, cf. "It is therefore risky to transcribe it as 妻 and further interpret it, supposedly on phonetic grounds […] as zī 齍 'grains, cereal crops in the vessel'." (2015: 159), does not cite those, but see https://humanum.arts.cuhk.edu.hk/Lexis/lexi-mf/search.php?word=妻 not exactly 奴 but the idea is there.

    Pages 6-7 (Piece 2) Takashima glosses multiple occurences of 報 combined as 報乙三, 報丙三, 報丁三, so 三 is fairly legible but 乙, 丙,丁 each appear with a square bracket which Takashima identifies with Bào 報 but without commenting on the form. = 服 features on pages 162-3 (Zhōuyuán jiǎgủ kèci 周原甲骨刻辭 Piece 2) and looks fairly regular.

  27. Chas Belov said,

    January 26, 2026 @ 11:43 pm

    @Yves Rehbein: Sorry, I'm elision-blind. By

    The cuneiform is "well drawn" for the medium of wedges impressed into wet clay and there are older clay tokens which resemble it very well, but that's not what I meant, no.

    ¿do you mean that it is to your eyes sexually explicit?

  28. Yves Rehbein said,

    January 28, 2026 @ 8:52 pm

    @ Chas Belov, yes, I meant that to my eyes it is explicit. I might have implied, yet I did not say "sexually". It is iconic and practically explains itself. There is no debate about it. That is in contrast to the Rorschach-test in this thread.

  29. Victor Mair said,

    January 28, 2026 @ 8:58 pm

    From Randy LaPolla:

    Although the combination 奴隸 may not be that old, 奴 and 隸 both had the sense of ’slave’ in Old Chinese, so forming a synonymous (or closely similar meaning) compound would not be unusual, like 國家 from 國 and 家 (both were types of fiefdom in the pre-Qin period).

  30. Yves Rehbein said,

    February 28, 2026 @ 1:16 pm

    I want to just briefly reitterate on my comment about the Sumerian comparandum for 母, 女 etc. Archiving stuff I found Delitzsch 1897.

    I cannot vouche for its accuracy since it may be outdated and I am not an expert. Pages 160-64 discuss some signs for man and woman, notably dam "conjux" (p. 161, viz. 'spouse'). Delitzsch interpretation of the central square is similar to the sinographic component 囗 (wéi 圍, “to surround; to encircle; to corral; all sides; etc.”). Anyway it can hardly be as I suggested, since sal appears as another part in the same sign.

    This does support Button's interpretation following Takashima. It is plenty odd though that Delitsch groups it with signs for canal, irrigation field (p. 158ff.).

    Delitzsch 1897: https://archive.org/details/dieentstehungde01deligoog/page/n216/mode/1up Friedrich Delitzsch, Die Entstehung des ältesten Schriftsystems : oder der Ursprung der Keilschriftzeichen, Leipzig : Hinrichs, 1897.

    PS: Takashima's note on Shibi "embelished strokes" is a useful supplement to the later article, "kneeling women with their wrists crossed".

RSS feed for comments on this post