What 𓃜 means
It marks a cow-related word, including the heavenly cow.
E9a is a label in a standard catalogue of Egyptian hieroglyphs for a reclining mature bovine. As a classifier, also called a determinative, it sits after an Egyptian word and signals its meaning group. It is silent and is not a complete word by itself.
Unicode's sign list describes E9a as a classifier for “cow” or “cow of the sky”; another sign-function table associates it with a word translated as “sacrificial animal.” The wider role as a silent classifier is clear, but references differ on the exact word it classifies.
Why does E9a follow a word?
Its place narrows the preceding spelling.
Egyptian spelling often recorded consonants without writing vowels, so a final sign could help readers distinguish a word's meaning. A related Egyptian word for cow is attested from 2345 BCE–145 BCE.
A papyrus manuscript from Egypt's New Kingdom, written on sheets made from a river plant, preserves the Myth of the Heavenly Cow.
Historical and specialist; its reading depends on the Egyptian word it accompanies.
Alone, it does not say “cow”; the surrounding spelling matters.
Part of collections
Who writes 𓃜
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Don't confuse it with
3
Questions people ask
1Why does 𓃜 appear as a box?
The font may lack this character. Unsupported characters can appear as a box, question mark, or blank space; a font that covers Egyptian Hieroglyphs can display it.
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How to type or find 𓃜
- Also called
- E9a
- Search it as
- E9a hieroglyph · E009A · reclining cow hieroglyph · cow classifier · heavenly cow hieroglyph · Ihet
- Shows up in
- Anything that takes text · its shape is whatever your font draws
𓃜\130DCCodes and encoding1 code points
A visible symbol can contain several code points. JS .length counts UTF-16 units; UTF-8 counts bytes.