The words of Metoro surely are signs which we need. Definitely he knew enough to be of help. But to use his words in order to find out the meaning is beyond our reach. What we can see, though, is that he regarded the first 4 glyphs as a group. After midnight (Aa1-43) he saw two more e ia toa tauuru (Aa1-44--45), and 4 + 2 = 6.

Considering also the other glyphs, we have one more example with toa (in Aa1-42). From this we can guess that Metoro saw a quartet (Aa1-37--40) followed by a special case (Aa1-42). According to Metoro there should be 5 toa before midnight and 2 after.

The structure 4 + 1 = 5 should remind us of the '4 corners of the earth' and of the special extracalendrical 5 days beyond 360 (as for instance in the ancient Egyptian calender and in the Mayan 19th month Vayeb). The structure of a night calendar cannot be completely independent of the structure for the 'winter' half in the calendar for the year.

Possibly, therefore, the 2 toa beyond midnight correspond to the two months beyond winter solstice, before the reappearance of light is announced by some star in the sky. The last triplet of toa glyphs are of another sort than the preceding, they are shorter, maybe because a the new daylight is around the corner:


Aa1-37	Aa1-38	Aa1-39	Aa1-40	Aa1-41

Aa1-42	Aa1-43	Aa1-44	Aa1-45

Aa1-46	Aa1-47	Aa1-48