Pictographic zodiacal symbols

[Erik Carvalhal Miller]

On Mon, Aug 12, 2024 at 10:54 PM Mark E. Shoulson via Unicode
<unicode at corp.unicode.org> wrote:
>
> 🪣
>
> (from what I can see in Hebrew poetry etc, aquarius is translated as
> דלי, "bucket.)

Indeed, one of the pages Harriet Riddle linked to
(https://www.unicode.org/reports/tr51/tr51-3-archive.html#Faces_Hands_Zodiac)
contains a listing for U+1F3FA ⟨🏺⟩ AMPHORA, explicitly described as a
representation of Aquarius; like a bucket, an amphora is a suitable
container for water.  (The font Iʼm seeing shows the amphora bearing a
design that could be said to be a squarish depiction of waves of
water; to evoke the astrological connection, the glyph would have been
better served by replacing that design by something resembling U+2652
⟨♒⟩ AQUARIUS…alas.)  Marius Spixʼs merman may seem linguistically
appropriate in German, where the word Wassermann (“water man”) can
mean both “merman” and “Aquarius”.

But the Latin word Aquarius means “water carrier” — however in English
usually explained as “Water Bearer” — and the classical depiction is
much as in the image in Andreas Stötznerʼs message: a human figure
(generally male, in accordance with the Latin ‑us suffix and, I
presume, with the gender roles of antiquity — though depictions need
not be exclusively male) pouring water from a fair‐sized vessel, such
as an amphora or a sack, evidently onto the ground or into more water.
The constellation Aquarius is said to depict the water bearer pouring
the water into the river constellation Eridanus.

I suppose that for some, the amphora emoji works as a representation
of Aquarius; but I feel that in excluding the human figure — the
aquarius himself — and the action of pouring, the emoji misses the
point.  I suppose one could fake it with a sequence such as ⟨👨🏺🫗⟩;
but even as a fallback for a ZWJ sequence, that seems pathetic.

Some of the other suggestions in Mariusʼ inspired list are also a mite
suspicious.  As the Zodiacʼs Gemini are traditionally associated with
the brothers Castor and Pollux, ⟨👬⟩ would seem a better choice,
though I suppose ⟨👫⟩ and ⟨👭⟩ could be serviceable alternates.  ⟨🏹⟩
is a pretty good attempt at Sagittarius (also on the aforementioned
page) — but itʼs missing the archer (the very meaning of the Latin
word sagittarius)!  Traditionally that archer is a centaur; a ZWJ
sequence of centaur + bow & arrow could work, but I see that a centaur
emoji proposal was declined a couple of years ago.  (Iʼm not aware
that thereʼs been a proposal for a centaur Archer specifically…)  And
the WOMAN emoji, often manifested as a head shot, seems a little too
generic for the nubile and sometimes winged female figure usually
associated with Virgo.  ⟨👩🪽⟩, perhaps?  But Aquarius seems to fare
the worst when it comes to encoded pictographs.