Next page reaches down to Ana-varu (8) - the pillar to sit by - to Betelgeuze on the bank of the Milky Way river. To Ardra the moist one, who in rongorongo times rose with the Sun in day 168. To the star ruled by Lord Rahu.  Life necessitates death and after the disappearance of the old generation follows the new which is basically the same: ... And then the bone spoke; it was there in the fork of the tree: Why do you want a mere bone, a round thing in the branches of a tree? said the head of One Hunaphu when it spoke to the maiden. You don't want it, she was told. I do want it, said the maiden. Very well. Stretch out your right hand here, so I can see it, said the bone. Yes, said the maiden. She stretched out her right hand, up there in front of the bone. And then the bone spit out its saliva, which landed squarely in the hand of the maiden. And then she looked in her hand, she inspected it right away, but the bone's saliva wasn't in her hand. It is just a sign I have given you, my saliva, my spittle. This, my head, has nothing on it - just bone, nothing of meat. It's just the same with the head of a great lord: it's just the flesh that makes his face look good. And when he dies, people get frightened by his bones. After that, his son is like his saliva, his spittle, in his being, whether it be the son of a lord or the son of a craftsman, an orator. The father does not disappear, but goes on being fulfilled. Neither dimmed nor destroyed is the face of a lord, a warrior, craftsman, an orator. Rather, he will leave his daughters and sons. So it is that I have done likewise through you. By comparing with other texts (Ka1-202 -- Ka2-4, Sa4-23 -- Sa4-30, Eb6-24 -- Eb6-30) it is possible to perceive a continuity from Ga1-11 to Ga1-26:
... 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. Then the old man was glad. He kindled a large fire, and as he wanted to keep it to himself, he built a house with a door which snapped up and down like jaws and killed everybody that wanted to get in. But the people knew that he was in possession of fire, and the stag determined to steal it for them. He took resinous wood, split it and stuck the splinters in his hair. Then he lashed two boats together, covered them with planks, danced and sang on them, and so he came to the old man's house. He sang: 'O, I go and will fetch the fire.' The old man's daughter heard him singing, and said to her father: 'O, let the stranger come into the house; he sings and dances so beautifully.' The stag landed and drew near the door, singing and dancing, and at the same time sprang to the door and made as if he wanted to enter the house. Then the door snapped to, without however touching him. But while it was again opening, he sprang quickly into the house. Here he seated himself at the fire, as if he wanted to dry himself, and continued singing. At the same time he let his head bend forward over the fire, so that he became quite sooty, and at last the splinters in his hair took fire. Then he sprang out, ran off and brought the fire to the people. Ga1-22 and Ga1-25 are together probably representing the pair of hulls of a double-canoe, i.e. two boats lashed together for long voyages across the sea.
Sa4-28 (125 = 5 * 5 * 5 and 42 * 8 = 336 = 365 - 29) illustrates a pair of canoe hulls which are lashed together, whereas the hulls are separated items in line Ga1. This could be a Sign of new land rising just ahead, of the long voyage across having reached to its end. ... The canoes of Ava Rei Pua and of Hotu were seen near the (off-shore) islets. On the fifteenth day of the month of October (tangaroa uri) the canoe of Hotu and the canoe of Ava Rei Pua landed. On the fifteenth day of the month of October (tangaroa uri), Nonoma left the house during the night to urinate outside. At this point Ira called out to Nonoma, 'Look at the canoe!' Nonoma ran, he quickly went to Te Hikinga Heru (a ravine in the side of the crater Rano Kau) and looked around. There he saw the double canoe way out near the (offshore) islets, and the two (hulls of the canoe) were lashed together. He ran and returned to the front of the house. He arrived and called into the house: 'Hey you! This canoe has arrived during the night without our noticing it!' Ira asked Nonoma, 'Where is the canoe, which you say is lying out there (in the water)?' Nonoma's voice came back: 'It is out there (in the water) close to the (offshore) islets! There it lies, and the two (hulls) are lashed together.' Perhaps Ira could not see the canoe because the Sun was at Betelgeuze, because its sail (ra) had been taken down:
... The substitution of the sun for the sail, both of which are called ra or raa in Polynesia, is a remarkable feature in Easter Island art ... ... The two hulls were no longer kept lashed together (i.e., they were separated for the rest of the journey). Hotu called out to the canoe of the queen: 'Steer the canoe to the left side when you sail in. Teke will jump over on board (your) canoe to work his mana when you sail through the fishing grounds!' Teke jumped on board the second canoe, (that) of the queen. The king's canoe sailed to the right, the queen's to the left. Honga worked his mana in the fishing grounds. (List of five fishing grounds that belong to Hotu and Honga.) Teke worked his mana in the fishing grounds to the left side. (List of nine fishing grounds that belong to Hotu and Teke.) It is impossible to present everything in a single instant. Furthermore, we should compare Ga1-23 with the coming solstice glyphs. Not only can we count 61 * 6 = 366 as a Sign of where the old year was terminated but also count 12 * 3 = 36 as a similar (though less powerful) Sign:
I consider this triplet of solstice glyphs as convincing evidence for my having calculated the time of rongorongo correctly to around 1842 A.D. It should also be added here - though not at this particular place in my 'Preliminary reading of the G text' - that the glyph type in Ga1-24 is atariki (the old king in the shadows):
He does not move any more, instead stands still facing us because the season of solstice has arrived. He is the king of the old year, the eldest (atariki) face of the Sun:
... A sidelight falls upon the notions connected with the stag by Horapollo's statement concerning the Egyptian writing of 'A long space of time: A Stag's horns grow out each year. A picture of them means a long space of time.' Chairemon (hieroglyph no. 15, quoted by Tzetzes) made it shorter: 'eniautos: elaphos'. Louis Keimer, stressing the absence of stags in Egypt, pointed to the Oryx (Capra Nubiana) as the appropriate 'ersatz', whose head was, indeed, used for writing the word rnp = year, eventually in 'the Lord of the Year', a well-known title of Ptah. Rare as this modus of writing the word seems to have been - the Wörterbuch der Aegyptischen Sprache (eds. Erman and Grapow), vol. 2, pp. 429-33, does not even mention this variant - it is worth considering (as in every subject dealt with by Keimer), the more so as Chairemon continues his list by offering as number 16: 'eniautos: phoinix', i.e., a different span of time, the much-discussed 'Phoenix-period' (ca. 500 years). There are numerous Egyptian words for 'the year', and the same goes for other ancient languages. Thus we propose to understand eniautos as the particular cycle beloning to the respective character under discussion: the mere word eniautos ('in itself', en heauto; Plato's Cratylus 410D) does not say more that just this. It seems unjustifiable to render the word as 'the year' as is done regularly nowadays, for the simple reason that there is no such thing as the year; to begin with, there is the tropical year and sidereal year, neither of them being of the same length as the Sothic year. Actually, the methods of Maya, Chinese, and Indian time reckoning should teach us to take much greater care of the words we use. The Indians, for instance, reckoned with five different sorts of 'year', among which one of 378 days, for which A. Weber did not have any explanation. That number of days, however, represents the synodical revolution of Saturn. Nothing is gained by the violence with which the Ancient Egyptian astronomical system is forced into the presupposed primitive frame. The eniautos of the Phoenix would be the said 500 (or 540) years; we do not know yet the stag's own timetable: his 'year' should be either 378 days or 30 years, but there are many more possible periods to be considered than we dream of - Timaios told us as much. For the time being the only important point is to become fully aware of the plurality of 'years', and to keep an eye open for more information about the particular 'year of the stag' (or the Oryx), as well as for other eniautio, especially those occurring in Greek myths which are, supposedly, so familiar to us, to mention only the assumed eight years of Apollo's indenture after having slain Python (Plutarch, De defectu oraculorum, ch. 21, 421C), or that 'one eternal year (aidion eniauton)', said to be '8 years (okto ete)', that Cadmus served Ares ... Position 324 ('Ko Ruti 20) could be important, we can guess from several places in the rongorongo texts. With Ga1-24 at atariki (Saturn, the Stag), at Betelgeuze, at a place ruled by Lord Rahu, at a day zero, we can count 324 = 12 * 27 and then compare with the synodic cycle of Saturn: 14 * 27 = 378.
Saturn was the ruler of time (Chronos = Kronos). Therefore we should consider the difference between 365 and 378, the difference between Sun and Saturn, the key number 13. 13 = 378 - 365. 13 * 27 = 351 = 350 + 1, i.e. we can perceive day 350 (50 weeks) as a zero day. 350 = 14 * 25. But then we should remember 14 * 24 = 336 = 365 - 29. In the Hawaiian Moon calendar there was a zero day immediately before Kane, shifting his number from 26 to 27 and the whole from 29 to 30.
Tane (Kane) was the ruler of trees and therefore must have represented Jupiter. By standing before Jupiter it was Saturn who ruled his time. The beginning of side a of the G text was evidently preceded by 63 days (9 weeks) counted from 0h. 399 (Jupiter) - 35 (5 weeks) = 364 = 13 * 28. 13 * 29 = 378 - 1 = 377. 13 * 20 = 260 = 378 - 2 * 59.
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