Deconstruction of benched gallows

[ThomasCoon]

The scribe made a deliberate effort to write either kch or cKh, so I don't see why the distinction should be considered meaningless. 

I'm not sure I agree - because someone made an effort to write something differently does not conclude that there is a distinction. This is observable: for example in English we can write <it's> or <it is> with the same meaning, but with distinct formats.

Also, you cite the fact that they often do not occur in the same place as evidence that they are equivalent, but then also cite the fact that they sometimes do occur in the same place as evidence that they are equivalent... it's hard to imagine what evidence that they are not equivalent would look like.

Sorry if that was vague, maybe this will clear it up: the benched gallows appear very rarely after qo- (they follow <qo> about 2% of the 5300 times that <qo> is used), but when they do appear, very often a <gallows>+<ch> parallel word can be found (maybe even every time - I'll have to check).

Consider this as part of your analysis... a letter is sometimes inserted under the bench, between the gallows and the end of the bench. It doesn't happen often, but it happens often enough that I'm pretty sure it's deliberate rather than some kind of error correction.

Thanks I'll have to check that out - I am not sure about these situations, though I see them every-so-often when I'm transcribing.

In fact it seems that the reason why the gallows letters are tall and why ch has the shape that it does is precisely so that the combination cKh will be possible.

That is an interesting observation, but respectfully I don't think I agree - I don't see the same deliberate creation.