Once again. Evidently the overall structure of the C text can be explained as a pair of Sun cycles:
264 (September 21) + 13 = 277 (October 4) and 277 + 13 = 290 (October 17). These dates of mine refer to the Gregorian calendar, which was 'born' in 1582 AD. Gregory XIII defined the date for right ascension 0h as ºMarch 21 (80). When Easter Island later was incorporated by Spain in 1770 AD the stars had moved ahead with ca 3 precessional days since the time of Gregory XIII. Possibly the C text was written to commemorate this time of rebirth: ... On the following day, 20 November 1770, Commander José Bustillo took formal possession of Easter Island 'in the name of the King and of Spain, our Lord and Master Don Carlos the third', renaming the island 'San Carlos'. Several hundred Rapanui - probably members of the Koro 'o 'Orongo tribe of the eastern 'Otu 'Iti - observed the ceremony not far from Poike's parasitic cones Parehe, Teatea, and Vai 'a Heva, on the tops of which the Spaniards had planted three crosses. Following three boisterous 'Viva el Rey!' for each cross, the land party let off three salvos of musketry, whereupon the two Spanish vessels San Lorenzo and Santa Rosalia responded with 21 cannon salutes. Spain's foremost historian of the Pacific, Francisco Mellén Blanco, has written of the event: 'The spectacle must have been awe-inspiring for the islanders. The parade of uniformed soldiers; the fluttering flags; the chaplains in their surplices chanting out the litany; the beating of drums, and the trilling of fifes must have left a lasting impression on all the natives who witnessed the procession' ... In 1842 AD (my assumed time for rongorongo) another precessional day had to be added and at that time Acrux would have moved ahead in the year to around *187 = *183 + *4, i.e. from ºSeptember 20 (263) to September 24 (267). ... time flows and the first day cannot be incised in the wooden tablet before all its 24 hours have been measured out in full. It is like the signs for the hours on the face of an old-fashioned clock:
If, as I have suggested above, the position of the glyph corresponding to nakshatra Acrux had to come after midnight, then the picture in Ca1-1 would refer back to the previous date, to March 21 (80) when Acrux would have been close to the Full Moon. Algorab (the Raven) would have risen with the Sun half a year later, in September 21 (264), and Metoro's hoea (tattooing instrument) could have alluded to the sharp beak instrument of Raven: ... In the morning of the world, there was nothing but water. The Loon was calling, and the old man who at that time bore the Raven's name, Nangkilstlas, asked her why. 'The gods are homeless', the Loon replied. 'I'll see to it', said the old man, without moving from the fire in his house on the floor of the sea. Then as the old man continued to lie by his fire, the Raven flew over the sea. The clouds broke. He flew upward, drove his beak into the sky and scrambled over the rim to the upper world. There he discovered a town, and in one of the houses a woman had just given birth. The Raven stole the skin and form of the newborn child. Then he began to cry for solid food, but he was offered only mother's milk. That night, he passed through the town stealing an eye from each inhabitant. Back in his foster parents' house, he roasted the eyes in the coals and ate them, laughing. Then he returned to his cradle, full and warm. He had not seen the old woman watching him from the corner - the one who never slept and who never moved because she was stone from the waist down. Next morning, amid the wailing that engulfed the town, she told what she had seen. The one-eyed people of the sky dressed in their dancing clothes, paddled the child out to mid-heaven in their canoe and pitched him over the side ... Side b of the C tablet carries 348 glyphs, equal in number to the number of glyphs on the beginning of side a of the tablet - given that we exclude the first 26 of them. Although 29 was expressing the dark night of the Moon this number here points to the Sun, because 26 + 2 * 348 = 722 = 2 * 361 = 2 * 19 * 19. But the total number of glyphs on the tablet is 740 = 722 + 18. Or rather, if we should count also day zero (September 20), in which case 741 = 722 + 19 = 39 * 19. |
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