Hieroglyphics of Horapollo: Book I: XXXII. How Delight
Hieroglyphics of Horapollo, tr. Alexander Turner Cory, [1840]
When they would represent delight they depict the NUMBER 16; 1 for from this age men
begin to hold commerce with women, and to procreate children.
52:1 Leemans very happily suggests, from the following passage in Pliny. Nat. Hist. V. 9., that the symbol had some reference to the rising of the Nile: "Justum incrementum est cubitorum sedecim . . . . . . . in duodecim cubitis famem sentit; in tredecim etiamnum esurit; quatuordecim cubits hilaritatem adferunt; quindecim securitatem; sedecim delicias."