The creator of the G text could have inserted an eye-catching array of glyphs measuring out 123 right ascension days in order to point out the difference between the total of 8 * 59 = 472 nights on the tablet on one hand and the measure 365 days in the Julian-Gregorian calendar on the other. If so, then Old Sun (alias Old Jupiter) could have ended his days by being 'covered up by earth' (puo) - as was done with old kitchen fires - at Tegmine (ζ Cancri, 'Covered Up').
Once upon a time - at the time of Ain (Bull's Eye) - Tegmine had risen with the Sun already in *MAY 15 (= 2 * 29 days beyond heliacal Ain at Ga1-1). ... A man had a daughter who possessed a wonderful bow and arrow, with which she was able to bring down everything she wanted. But she was lazy and was constantly sleeping. At this her father was angry and said: 'Do not be always sleeping, but take thy bow and shoot at the navel of the ocean, so that we may get fire.' The navel of the ocean was a vast whirlpool in which sticks for making fire by friction were drifting about. At that time men were still without fire. Now the maiden seized her bow, shot into the navel of the ocean, and the material for fire-rubbing sprang ashore ...
But at the time of rongorongo May 15 (365 + 135 = 500) was where the Sun reached Tau-ono (the 6 'stones') with the new Pleiades year arriving in the following day. ... They all sat down and rested [on the plain of Oromanga], when suddenly they saw that a turtle had reached the shore and had crawled up on the beach. He [Ira] looked at it and said, 'Hey, you! The turtle has come on land!' He said, 'Let's go! Let's go back to the shore.' They all went to pick up the turtle. Ira was the first one to try to lift the turtle - but she didn't move. Then Raparenga said, 'You do not have the necessary ability. Get out of my way so that I can have a try!' Raparenga stepped up and tried to lift the turtle - but Raparenga could not move her. Now you spoke, Kuukuu: 'You don't have the necessary ability, but I shall move this turtle. Get out of my way!' Kuukuu stepped up, picked up the turtle, using all his strength. After he had lifted the turtle a little bit, he pushed her up farther. No sooner had he pushed her up and lifted her completely off the ground when she struck Kuukuu with one fin. She struck downward and broke Kuukuu's spine.The turtle got up, went back into the (sea) water, and swam away. All the kinsmen spoke to you (i.e. Kuukuu): 'Even you did not prevail against the turtle!' They put the injured Kuukuu on a stretcher and carried him inland. They prepared a soft bed for him in the cave and let him rest there. They stayed there, rested, and lamented the severely injured Kuukuu. Kuukuu said, 'Promise me, my friends, that you will not abandon me!' They all replied, 'We could never abandon you!' They stayed there twenty-seven days in Oromanga. Everytime Kuukuu asked, 'Where are you, friends?' they immediately replied in one voice, 'Here we are!' They all sat down and thought. They had an idea and Ira spoke, 'Hey, you! Bring the round stones (from the shore) and pile them into six heaps of stones!' One of the youths said to Ira, 'Why do we want heaps of stone?' Ira replied, 'So that we can all ask the stones to do something.' They took (the material) for the stone heaps (pipi horeko) and piled up six heaps of stone at the outer edge of the cave. Then they all said to the stone heaps, 'Whenever he calls, whenever he calls for us, let your voices rush (to him) instead of the six (of us) (i.e., the six stone heaps are supposed to be substitutes for the youths). They all drew back to profit (from the deception) (? ki honui) and listened. A short while later, Kuukuu called. As soon as he had asked, 'Where are you?' the voices of the stone heaps replied, 'Here we are!' All (the youths) said, 'Hey, you! That was well done!' ...
... Vainamoinen set about building a boat, but when it came to the prow and the stern, he found he needed three words in his rune that he did not know, however he sought for them. In vain he looked on the heads of the swallows, on the necks of the swans, on the backs of the geese, under the tongues of the reindeer. He found a number of words, but not those he needed. Then he thought of seeking them in the realm of Death, Tuonela, but in vain. He escaped back to the world of the living only thanks to his potent magic. He was still missing his three runes. He was then told by a shepherd to search in the mouth of Antero Vipunen, the giant ogre. The road, he was told, went over swords and sharpened axes. Ilmarinen made shoes, shirt and gloves of iron for him, but warned him that he would find the great Vipunen dead. Nevertheless, the hero went. The giant lay underground, and trees grew over his head. Vainamoinen found his way to the giant's mouth, and planted his iron staff in it. The giant awoke and suddenly opened his huge mouth. Vainamoinen slipped into it and was swallowed. As soon as he reached the enormous stomach, he thought of getting out. He built himself a raft and floated on it up and down inside the giant. The giant felt tickled and told him in many and no uncertain words where he might go, but he did not yield any runes. Then Vainamoinen built a smithy and began to hammer his iron on an anvil, torturing the entrails of Vipunen, who howled out magic songs to curse him away. But Vainamoinen said, thank you, he was very comfortable and would not go unless he got the secret words. Then Vipunen at last unlocked the treasure of his powerful runes. Many days and nights he sang, and the sun and the moon and the waves of the sea and the waterfalls stood still to hear him. Vainamoinen treasured them all and finally agreed to come out. Vipunen opened his great jaws, and the hero issued forth to go and build his boat at last ... Väinömöinen must have had a fire for his smithy (on his heavenly raft inside the belly of the giant). When the Sun reached a Heap of Fuel (μ Cancri) then the Full Moon was at the Heavenly Raft (θ Aquilae). A Bright Fire would follow the Heap of Fuel, which could have motivated the cock designed to be a flame and calling out at dawn in Ga3-3:
At the Full Moon was the Peacock star, which explains the curious peacock tail of the divine calf Kamadhenu:
If this was the place for the birth of a new cycle, from where to start counting nights anew, it would have been in good order to use the calendar dates according to the time when Bharani was at 0h (instead of the current heliacal dates). Possibly this motivated the dates presented in Manuscript E:
... They all climbed to the top of the hill. They climbed up on the tenth day of the month of June ('Maro') ... They made camp and constructed a house. Kuukuu got up, worked the ground, and heaped up the earth [cfr Tegmine] for the yam roots. Makoi got up and began to familiarize himself with the (new) land. (This took place) on the fifteenth day of the month of June ('Maro') ...
... Midsummer is the flowering season of the oak, which is the tree of endurance and triumph, and like the ash is said to 'court the lightning flash'. Its roots are believed to extend as deep underground as its branches rise in the air - Virgil mentions this - which makes it emblematic of a god whose law runs both in Heaven and in the Underworld ... The month, which takes its name from Juppiter the oak-god, begins on June 10th and ends of July 7th. Midway comes St. John's Day, June 24th, the day on which the oak-king was sacrificially burned alive. The Celtic year was divided into two halves with the second half beginning in July, apparently after a seven-day wake, or funeral feast, in the oak-king's honour ... The 2nd half of the Celtic year was not beginning until with July 15, but June 10 was where the month of Jupiter began. Here a Heap of Fuel was prepared. ... Odysseus and his fleet were now in a mythic realm of difficult trials and passages, of which the first was to be the Land of the Cyclopes, 'neither nigh at hand, nor yet afar off', where the one-eyed giant Polyphemus, son of the god Poseidon (who, as we know, was the lord of tides and of the Two Queens, and the lord, furthermore, of Medusa), dwelt with his flocks in a cave. 'Yes, for he was a monstrous thing and fashioned marvelously, nor was he like to any man that lives by bread, but like a wooded peak of the towering hills, which stands out apart and alone from others.' Odysseus, choosing twelve men, the best of the company, left his ships at shore and sallied to the vast cave. It was found stocked abundantly with cheeses, flocks of lambs and kids penned apart, milk pails, bowls of whey; and when the company had entered and was sitting to wait, expecting hospitality, the owner came in, shepherding his flocks. He bore a grievous weight of dry wood, which he cast down with a din inside the cave, so that in fear all fled to hide. Lifting a huge doorstone, such as two and twenty good four-wheeled wains could not have raised from the ground, he set this against the mouth of the cave, sat down, milked his ewes and goats, and beneath each placed her young, after which he kindled a fire and spied his guests ... When the Old Fire (Jupiter) had been 'covered up' it became dark and the stars would emerge to be seen. I guess the Bharani date Maro 15 at the pregnant rising fish in Ga3-4 could have referred to the midnight culmination of Heka, which at the time of rongorongo was in day 390 (= 13 * 30) according to the Gregorian (or Julian) calendar structure. There were 242 (= 365 - 123) glyphs on side b of the G tablet and at Ga3-4 the heliacal day number extrapolated backwards to the time of Ain was *242. ... The Heka triplet is where we otherwise would have expected to see a bright single star representing Orion's head (when looking from a location in the northern hemisphere) ... λ and the two stars phi furnish an easy refutation of the popular error as to the apparent magnitude of the moon's disc, Colas writing of this in the Celestial Handbook of 1892: In looking at this triangle nobody would think that the moon could be inserted in it; but as the distance from λ to φ¹ is 27', and the distance from φ¹ to φ² is 33', it is a positive fact; the moon's mean apparent diameter being 31' 7''. This illusion, prevalent in all ages, has attracted the attention of many great men; Ptolemy, Roger Bacon, Kepler, and others having treated of it. The lunar disc, seen by the naked eye of an uninstructed observer, appears, as it is frequently expressed 'about the size of a dinner-plate', but should be seen as only equal to a peppercorn ... The giant lost his single eye through a drilling fire caused by a fresh spear and the serpent rope which was drawing the sky dome to and fro in a sinus pattern.
... Two were eaten that night for dinner, two the next morning for breakfast, and two the following night. (Six gone.) But the companions meanwhile had prepared a prodigous stake with which to bore out the Cyclops' single eye; and when clever Odysseus, declaring his own name to be Noman, approached and offered the giant a skin of wine, Polyphemus, having drunk his fill, 'lay back', as we read, 'with his great neck bent round, and sleep that conquers all men overcame him.' Wine and fragments of the men's flesh he had just eaten issued forth from his mouth, and he vomited heavy with drink. 'Then', declared Odysseus, I thrust in that stake under the deep ashes, until it should grow hot, and I spake to my companions comfortable words, lest any should hang back from me in fear. But when that bar of olive wood was just about to catch fire in the flame, green though it was, and began to glow terribly, even then I came nigh, and drew it from the coals, and my fellows gathered about me, and some god breathed great courage into us. For their part they seized the bar of olive wood, that was sharpened at the point, and thrust it into his eye, while I from my place aloft turned it about, as when a man bores a ship's beam with a drill while his fellows below spin it with a strap, which they hold at either end, and the auger runs round continually. Even so did we seize the fiery-pointed brand and whirled it round in his eye, and the blood flowed about the heated bar. And the breath of the flame singed his eyelids and brows all about, as the ball of the eye burnt away, and the roots thereof crackled in the flame. And as when a smith dips an ax or adze in chill water with a great hissing, when he would temper it - for hereby anon comes the strength of iron - even so did his eye hiss round the stake of olive. And he raised a great and terrible cry, that the rock rang around, and we fled away in fear, while he plucked forth from his eye the brand bedabbled in much blood. Then maddened with pain he cast it from him with his hands, and called with a loud voice on the Cyclopes, who dwelt about him in the caves along the windy heights. And they heard the cry and flocked together from every side, and gathering round the cave, called in to ask what ailed him. 'What hath so distressed thee, Polyphemus, that thou criest thus aloud through the immortal night, and makest us sleepless? Surely no mortal driveth off thy flocks against thy will: surely none slayeth thyself by force or craft?' And the strong Polyphemus spake to them again from out of the cave: 'My friends, Noman is slaying me by guile, nor at all by force.' And they answered and spake winged words: 'If then no man is violently handling thee in thy solitude, it can in no wise be that thou shouldst escape the sickness sent by mighty Zeus. Nay, pray thou to thy father, the lord Poseidon.' On this wise they spake and departed; and my heart within me laughed to see how my name and cunning counsel had beguiled him ... |
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