𠦪

Unicode: U+209AA

Pinyin: hū

Structure

Related substructures

Precursors

Oracle Bone Script

c. 1300–1050 BCE (Late Shang)

---

Inscriptions carved on turtle plastrons and animal bones for divination and record-keeping in the late Shang royal court; the oldest large attested corpus of written Chinese.Wikipedia ->

Bronze Inscriptions

c. 1200–221 BCE (Shang–Zhou; continues into the Warring States)

---

Inscriptions cast or engraved on ritual bronzes, especially prominent from the Western Zhou onward; a major source for early political, ritual, and social history.Wikipedia ->

Qin Script

c. 475–206 BCE (Qin, Warring States → Qin dynasty)

---

Qin-area character forms attested on bamboo/wood slips (e.g., Shuihudi, deposited 217 BCE), overlapping chronologically with the standardization of seal script and the emergence of clerical tendencies.Wikipedia ->

Small Seal Script

Standardized 221–206 BCE (Qin); developed earlier in Qin

---

The standardized seal script promulgated after Qin’s unification, based on earlier Qin seal forms and used as an empire-wide norm.Wikipedia ->

Clerical Script

c. 300 BCE–220 CE (emerged late Warring States/Qin; dominant Han)

---

A practical script that evolved from late Warring States/Qin writing; it matured and became dominant in the Han dynasty, favoring faster, more rectilinear strokes.Wikipedia ->

Last Modified: 2026-01-29 11:48 UTC