Our next illustration (“I”) is concerned with water: we have here the wavy lines for water which is similarly represented in both Egyptian and Chinese hieroglyphics. Below (“J”) we have a representation of the little irrigation ditches by which gardens are watered: hence the cuneiform ideogram derives the meaning of “field” and stands for two distinct Assyrian words—“ginu” and “iklu,” both of which mean “field.” It is somewhat doubtful what the hieroglyph in “K” is intended to represent: Hommel regarded it as a picture of a leathern bottle which would not unnaturally suggest the meaning “desert”; Barton, on the other hand, with perhaps greater probability regards it as a rude outline of the Euphrates valley, with its two rivers and its “occasional sections of irrigated and so fertile land,” indicated by the cross-lines, and he rightly says that this would account for the meanings “plain” and “lands,” and by an extension “desert,” “elevated country,” and last of all “back.” In “L” we see the picture of a house, which however hardly corresponds with our conception of what a house should be: the cuneiform sign derived from it is the ideogram for “bitu” (the Hebrew “Beth” occurring in the proper names Bethlehem, “house of bread,” Bethshemesh, “house of the sun,” etc.), the ordinary Assyrian word for “house.” [Illustration: FIG. 2.—From Harper’s _Old Testament and Semitic Studies_, Vol. II, pp. 241 ff.—_By permission_.] The next figure (“M”) shows us a covered and steaming pot; hence the meanings of the later cuneiform sign are to “burst forth,” “exult,” “rejoice.” “N” is somewhat doubtful, but it probably represents a “priestly garment,” inasmuch as the cuneiform sign derived from it is the Assyrian ideogram for “šangu” a “priest.” “O” is apparently a rude picture of either a crown or a ceremonial umbrella, as the emblem of greatness, the picture of the Assyrian king attended by a slave whose office it is to hold an umbrella over the head of his royal master being, through its frequent occurrence on the bas-reliefs which adorned the walls of the palaces, sufficiently familiar. However that maybe, the cuneiform sign is the ordinary ideogram for “rabu” (the root which occurs in Rabshakeh, Rabsaris, etc.), which means “great”; we have already seen this sign compounded with the picture of a man, the two together meaning “king.” In “P” we see a picture of a bowl in which two tinder-sticks have been inserted with a view to their ignition by friction; hence is derived the meaning of the cuneiform sign developed from it,—“fire.”