Representing (probably) the sun rising behind a hill. The inner curve represents the hill, while the outer curve represents the rays of the sun. Old Kingdom examples show a semicircular form with four colorful bands of blues, reds, and greens surmounted by a halo of rays,
; Betrò suggests it may thus represent a rainbow rather than a hill. Allen suggests that it represents the sun rising above the primeval mound, the first earth to arise from the primordial waters at the time of creation. The semi-cursive style of writing this hieroglyph, which showed the sun’s rays as a series of projections instead of an unbroken arc,
, was sometimes carried over into ordinary hieroglyphic writing. Another form shows the arc unbroken but rays still visible,
. The phonogrammatic value of
ḫꜥ is derived by the
rebus principle from its use as a logogram for
ḫꜥ.
