2. The effort to describe and name (for convenience sake) every variant of glyph is a futile task, because there seems to be no limit to them. Each glyph is a package of signs, as if each glyph was like a drawing by Arcimboldo:  If we have a system of basic glyph types together with their meanings (as if the man in profile above had been such a type), then we can begin to appreciate what the added details (the adjuncts) may convey in meaning, in order to try to grasp the total meaning of the picture. If we could not see the figure of man we could not understand why the fruits were assembled. And without seeing the fruits we could not understand who this person was supposed to be (viz. a personification of summer). I have earlier created such a system of basic glyph types together with their meanings. Although it is only a prelimary sketch leaving much untold and although there certainly must be mistakes here and there it is enough of a foundation to stand on. We can tackle the adjuncts. But I have no system for the adjuncts and I suspect there is only one way to learn them (and to teach them), viz. by experience. This is one of the reasons why this dictionary of signs needs so many pages. Another, of course, is my limited understanding. I learn the meanings of the adjuncts by drawing hesitant conclusions from experience, and more experience is gained by writing and writing and writing. If you read what I write also you will gradually come to learn the meanings of the adjuncts. Or you could write yourself, which is a more powerful, but time-consuming, method. I cannot resist displaying another Arcimboldo masterpiece:
Who is this man? Not until we can see his hair like flames emerging from what looks like glowing coals can we guess - he is a personification of fire. This type of picture cannot be read out aloud otherwise than by saying for instance Man on Fire, which hardly conveys more than a minute part of what our eyes are experiencing. A blind person would not get much out from hearing us tell about a Man on Fire. The lesson is that without eyes to see, and without the glorious eye of Sun above, we would be in the darkness - unless we create a fire ourselves. Real or intellectual. It is still an open question if such a package of signs which constitutes a glyph is similar to a picture of Arcimboldo - i.e. which hardly can be put into words otherwise than by rather arbitrarily doing so - or whether different persons of knowledge would tend to use the same words. Yet, before the rongorongo system of writing was created there must have been a common system of talking and listening by the campfires in the evening. Such a system surely must have been well developed and full of wordplays, hints, and allusions. All the old stories were retold with new twists, easily understood because the basic story was so well known. Possibly we therefore need to know the basic old stories before we can understand the prolific adjuncts. Adjuncts could also give us clues to what words might have been intended to accompany a glyph, and I will give an example:
The central figure is glyph number 366 of the total 472 in the text of G. If each glyph corresponds to a day, then position 366 straddles the end of one year and the beginning of next, ¼ + ¾. We can see there is one part at left and another at right. The left part is a strangly compressed version of the glyph type I have at left and the right part is a type of person who does not look straight at us as in a normal tagata glyph but who looks ahead. And his right leg has developed into a peculiar 'bulb'. A glyph composition which is complicated is meant to be contemplated at for a second or two by the reader, presumably it is like a wordplay with a juxtaposition of elements not normally found together. Glyph number 366 stayed rather long in my mind before I saw a light. The strange leg had made me think about elephantiasis and similar ailments. "Many people in Malabar, Nayars as well as Brahmans and their wives - in fact about a quarter or a fifth of the total population, including the people of the lowest castes - have very large legs, swollen to a great size; and they die of this, and it is an ugly thing to see. They say that this is due to the water through which they go, because the country is marshy. This is called pericaes in the native language, and all the swelling is the same from the knees downward, and they have no pain, nor do they take any notice of this infirmity." (Wikipedia) A marshy habitat is what you will come to when leaving dry land. Given the correspondence between 'earth' in time-space and the earth we walk on, there is a kind of logic in regarding the part beyond ¼ of 'dry land' as a place with 'water'. Water is the opposite of fire, and instead of enjoying the warmth, light, and dry comfort of a fire you should be prepared to get wet and cold when wading out into the sea. When your head sinks down under the surface your eyes can hardly see any more and it is growing darker and darker as you continue out and downwards. From elephantiasis to clubfoot (va'e pau) the distance is not far:
The item which precedes va'e pau in my wordlist is Puna pau. And - I suddenly realized - what image could be better for representing the little fraction of a day remaining of the year beyond day 365 than Puna pau, the small well which quickly ran dry. Pau means to 'run out'. The compressed and narrow U-form at left in the glyph could indicate a deep well with little capacity. It might be argued that water should not be used as representing the fraction of 'land' at the end of the year, but the Polynesians drew a sharp distinction between sweet water (vai) as in a well on one hand and the salt water of the sea (tai) on the other. The one was necessery to preserve life, to drink the other would lead to untimely death. Vai was water which originated from above, but the water of the sea did not. Vai was healthy 'living water', the opposite of sea water. The fresh water raining down from the sky was together with the healthy rays from Sun both necessary and enough to make the earth develop living beings, and anciently the close connection between sweet rainy water and the light rays from Sun above created a concept where rain water and sun rays were regarded as just complementary aspects of a single entity (the Rain God). We may at first find this idea rather simple-minded and childish, but it was not. It was a conclusion drawn from observation, already from the very ancient times when cooking over an open fire developed into a custom: ... The rays drink up the little waters of the earth, the shallow pools, making them rise, and then descend again in rain.' Then, leaving aside the question of water, he summed up his argument: 'To draw up and then return what one had drawn - that is the life of the world.' In spring when the rays from Sun dries up the ground it also sucks up water by evaporation (like steam rising from the cooking pot), and later this water just has to come down, and it often happens quite drastically by torrents in a rainy season. The end of the year was not in spring but in late autumn, thus it should be represented by sweet water rather than by e.g. a stick of dry wood. Fire 'lives' in certain kinds of wood and a tree should therefore not be used as a symbol for the rainy season, and instead of using the Egyptian nehet (tree) picture for the dark end of a cycle the mountain (mauga) in the west was more appropriate:
Mauga also means an old man, i.e. a person close to disappearing.
Thus it was possible for me to toy with the idea that Puna pau was what glyph number 366 depicted. More evidence was needed, though, and it came by reading in Manuscript E about how the explorers sent out from the old homeland arrived to the new land - not only to Easter Island but also to the 'land' of the new year which could be observed emerging from the 'sea' by looking at the positions of the stars in the sky. The explorers went ashore at Hanga Te Pau:
I have here noted the pages on which we can read about it in the manuscript, because the numbers of the pages serve as Signs. Number 17 indicates the beginning of a new sequence of events, the first beyond number 16 (a square of 4, like the 'earth' of the old year with its 4 quarters). The numbers explicitly written on the pages of Manuscript E are adjuncts to its words. The landing of the explorers at Hanga Te Pau is told about at the end of page 17 and at the beginning of page 18. Hanga Te Pau is a 'station in time', which identifies the border between the 'sea journey' and the 'new land'. Both the sea and the 'sea' were left behind and in front lay both a 'new land' and Easter Island. I began to think of glyph number 366 as Hanga Te Pau:
But both readings are possible, of course. Haga is a bay, a curve formed by the shoreline, and this we can (with some effort) imagine at left in the glyph. But to determine the best fit, chosing between Puna pau and Hanga Te Pau (or some other interpretation), we need to see the surrounding glyphs and also the structure of the G text as a whole, i.e. the whole context. One more point should be made, viz. that I have a glyph type which resembles the 'club foot':
A 'calabash' was a way to lovingly refer to the new generation: ... Les Mahigo (enfants) et les petites calebasses sont ici réunis. Dans leurs prières, en demandant à Makémaké de petits calebasses, c'étaient surtout des enfants qu'ils désignaient par ce mot. (The children, Mahigo, and the small calabashes are here mentioned together. In their prayers, when asking Makemake for 'small calabashes', it was especially children who were meant.) ... Therefore I for the moment prefer reading Puna pau, a well in time-space with a little pool of sweet water (the hipu sign) remaining at the bottom, an image similar to our own idea of a new year child. The newborn 'calabash' is the Rain God, and in front of him lies spring. He is looking ahead and up, stretching his head:
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