If we compare the 8 last glyphs on side b with the first 8 on side a they should in a way thus illustrate the same 8 days ('nights'):
Metoro saw heke also in Cb14-13, but to is a rather obscure word:
The parallel glyphs in this pair of groups are not very similar. However, if my proposition is correct, then we should be able to use both these sets of 8 glyphs for increasing our understanding. Even if their specific meanings are different their general ideas should be the same.
At the glyphs for March 26 I have taken the opportunity to note the midnight culmination (in March 26) of the star Alphard (α Hydrae), which possibly could be important to know. My notation is a straigth horizontal line through the star name.
The star Porrima (γ Virginis), which in rongorongo times rose with the Sun in September 28 and which was close to the Full Moon in March 29 was by the Arabs the Sign for their 11th manzil (lunar station). At the opposite side of the year was Delta (δ Andromedae), a star which was precisely 8.0 days after 0h - given that we reduce my earlier assumed value with 0.4:
The table which I have here assembled suggests the Arabs may have regarded March 29 as the time 3 days before the beginning of their solar calendar year (in April 1). I have therefore painted Delta at March 29 black (meaning no light as yet present). From April 1 (day 91 in an ordinary Gregorian year) to September 28 (271) there were 180 days, half 360. Half 365¼ = ca 183 and counted from March 29 (Delta) to September 28 (Porrima) there were 183 days. The technique of redundancy maybe was used by the Arabs when they used the strange name 'Barker'. It should preferably be a name opposite in meaning to the phenomena of spring and I guess they decided to point from Porrima to spring by naming the autumn position al Áwwā' in contrast to al Awwal ('the First'). If you knew the meaning of one of these appellations, then you could search for the meaning of the other at the opposite side of the sky dome. My idea to contrast 'the Barker' with al Awwal originated from reading about the Equuleus (the Foal)constellation: ... Al Faras al Awwal, 'the First Horse', in reference to its rising before Pegasus ... Aldebaran (as in Al Dabarān) means 'the Follower' and therefore 'the First' (al Awwal) should come earlier. Possibly 'the First' referred to April 1 and to η Andromedae: Hevelius placed η Andromedae at the back side of the northern of the pair of fishes in Pisces, probably his Sign in order to make the viewers think. The star δ is where Andromeda has her left deltoid muscle.
The fertile Nile delta was the ideal picture of a place for births, and by way of association therefore also a suitable place for the 'origo' in the Arab manzil structure: The opposite side of the coin (of life and death) was that delta (the 4th letter) was a dangerous place: ... Sorrowing, then, the two women placed Osiris's coffer on a boat, and when the goddess Isis was alone with it at sea, she opened the chest and, laying her face on the face of her brother, kissed him and wept. The myth goes on to tell of the blessed boat's arrival in the marshes of the Delta, and of how Set, one night hunting the boar by the light of the full moon, discovered the sarcophagus and tore the body into fourteen pieces, which he scattered abroad; so that, once again, the goddess had a difficult task before her. She was assisted, this time, however, by her little son Horus, who had the head of a hawk, by the son of her sister Nephtys, little Anubis, who had the head of a jackal, and by Nephtys herself, the sister-bride of their wicked brother Set. Anubis, the elder of the two boys, had been conceived one very dark night, we are told, when Osiris mistook Nephtys for Isis; so that by some it is argued that the malice of Set must have been inspired not by the public virtue and good name of the noble culture hero, but by this domestic inadventure. The younger, but true son, Horus, on the other hand, had been more fortunately conceived - according to some, when Isis lay upon her dead brother in the boat, or, according to others, as she fluttered about the palace pillar in the form of a bird. The four bereaved and searching divinities, the two mothers and their two sons, were joined by a fifth, the moon-god Thoth (who appears sometimes in the form of an ibis-headed scribe, at other times in the form of a baboon), and together they found all of Osiris save his genital member, which had been swallowed by a fish. They tightly swathed the broken body in linen bandages, and when they performed over it the rites that thereafter were to be continued in Egypt in the ceremonial burial of kings, Isis fanned the corpse with her wings and Osiris revived, to become the rule of the dead. He now sits majestically in the underworld, in the Hall of the Two Truths, assisted by forty-two assessors, one from each of the principal districts of Egypt; and there he judges the souls of the dead. These confess before him, and when their hearts have been weighed in a balance against a feather, receive, according to their lives, the reward of virtue and the punishment of sin. In other words, the birth of a son necessitates the death of his father. The son must - like Taetagaloa - be the son of a widow. Number 4 is a number of death. Probably Taetagaloa means Tae-Tagaloa, i.e. 'Not-Tagaroa'. Although Taetagaloa had no father he was not without a father in the sense that Ta'aroa (Tagaroa) 'the unique one' had no father.
|