Ancient Chinese Character Examination: Boat

Ancient Chinese character for "boat"

To begin, I thought it would be interesting to take a look at the most ancient form of the Chinese character for a boat. As I've been posting about the past few days, history, mythology, and theology collide with the story of Noah's ark. This Chinese character, shares a striking similarity to the account in Genesis.

Chinese is a picture language, meaning that it's almost a drawing of a word. Many times, it's a mix of a few symbols, just as this character for boat is. Within it, are three words, VESSEL, EIGHT, and MOUTH. A boat is a vessel that holds eight mouths. A mouth in many ancient cultures, is another way of saying a person. So eight persons. How many persons were aboard the ark that Noah was told to build, according to the Mosaic account? Eight.

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And yes, I did draw this.