1. Glyph line b3 ought to coincide with Aquarius. Sadalmelek (α) is beyond 22h, and in the image from Urania's Mirror the right arm of Aquarius cannot be seen, as if it had been changed into falling sweet water:
The last star visible in his right shoulder is Sadalmelek and maybe The Lucky One of the King refers to this - the star is not hidden by water. In Gb2-15 the circulation of water could be illustrated, with the open mouth receiving it from above. The onset of the rainy season was probably regarded to be in 'April' (= October = Vaitu nui) and the face of Sun possibly was imagined to disappear behind torrents of rain. North of the equator spring arrives with Mars (at the end of the 'Goatfish'), while day number 270 in the G text could represent the last day of Sun. The Aquarius constellation stretches far, for about a quarter of the year, and it overlaps the 'fishy' part of the 'Goatfish' on one hand and the square of Pegasus on the other:
If I extend my list of prominent stars beyond Fomalhaut, however, there is no Aquarian star in the stream of water from his urn:
Albali (ε) is the earliest Aquarian star to rise, and maybe the extraordinary Gb1-21 (with no comparable similar sign anywhere else in the rongorongo texts) indicates where the rule of Aquarius begins, where 'land' has turned into 'water':
Perhaps it is significant that it is the first glyph beyond 'π', corresponding to the first day of a new cycle. The 'eyes' hanging down could represent water droplets or they could allude to some myth similar in meaning to that of the eyes of the Jaguar: ... The jaguar learned from the grasshopper that the toad and the rabbit had stolen its fire while it was out hunting, and that they had taken it across the river. While the jaguar was weeping at this, an anteater came along, and the jaguar suggested that they should have an excretory competition. The anteater, however, appropriated the excrement containing raw meat and made the jaguar believe that its own excretions consisted entirely of ants. In order to even things out, the jaguar invited the anteater to a juggling contest, using their eyes removed from the sockets: the anteater's eyes fell back into place, but the jaguar's remained hanging at the top of a tree, and so it became blind. At the request of the anteater, the macuco bird made the jaguar new eyes out of water, and these allowed it to see in the dark. Since that time the jaguar only goes out at night. Having lost fire, it eats meat raw ... The 'river' is presumably the Milky Way, which goes from Gemini to Sagittarius and then down to the South Pole and up again. |
||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
