In rongorongo times - as well as today - it was possible to find the day number for a given heliacal star by adding 80 to its right ascension day:
And in order to find the day number at the time of Elnath (β Tauri) it was possible to reduce the current day number by 80. The day number at the time of Elnath could also have been found by adding 64 (= 8 * 8) to the glyph number on the G tablet:
8(0) was a most valuable number: ... Easter Island (te pito o te kainga) is the last of all known islands. Seven lands lie before it, but these do not recommend themselves for settlement. Easter Island is the 'eighth land' (te varu kainga). Actually, we are dealing here with a figure of speech because 'seven' and 'eight' used as qualifying quantities play a traditional role in Oceania (Barthel 1962a). While the number seven is known as a topos in MQS., HAW., and MAO., the topos of the number eight goes far beyond eastern Polynesia (MQS., HAW., TAH.). In TON., the number eight is 'a conventional term signifying many or a well-balanced number' (McKern 1929:17), and on Malaita in the southern Solomon Islands, the physical world in its entirety is referred to as 'eight islands (wālu malau) (Ivens 1927:400). The number eight not only means 'many' but also denotes perfection. Thus, when Easter Island was called 'an eighth land', the expression contained first of all the idea of a 'last' island - an island farthest away from the rest of the islands that make up the oceanic world. At the same time, the expression indicated a special position among the other islands. The idea of groups of seven, which are surpassed by an eight element, seems to belong to the cosmology of Asian high cultures. For example, there are seven planets circling the world axis, which represents the eighth, and therefore central, position ...
The world axis (8) could well have been defined from number 80 + 64 = 144 (= 12 * 12) - with a 'Tree' connecting oMAY 24 (144) and Vega culminating at its top to Sirius at its other end and having culminated half a year earlier at its 'foundation':
... On February 9 the Chorti Ah K'in, 'diviners', begin the agricultural year. Both the 260-day cycle and the solar year are used in setting dates for religious and agricultural ceremonies, especially when those rituals fall at the same time in both calendars. The ceremony begins when the diviners go to a sacred spring where they choose five stones with the proper shape and color. These stones will mark the five positions of the sacred cosmogram created by the ritual. When the stones are brought back to the ceremonial house, two diviners start the ritual by placing the stones on a table in a careful pattern that reproduces the schematic of the universe. At the same time, helpers under the table replace last year's diagram with the new one. They believe that by placing the cosmic diagram under the base of God at the center of the world they demonstrate that God dominates the universe. The priests place the stones in a very particular order. First the stone that corresponds to the sun in the eastern, sunrise position of summer solstice is set down; then the stone corresponding to the western, sunset position of the same solstice. This is followed by stones representing the western, sunset position of the winter solstice, then its eastern, sunrise position. Together these four stones form a square. They sit at the four corners of the square just as we saw in the Creation story from the Classic period and in the Popol Vuh. Finally, the center stone is placed to form the ancient five-point sign modern researchers called the quincunx ...
Below I have listed the 8 brightest stars in the sky in order from their apparent luminosity:
From heliacal Sirius to heliacal Vega there were 282 - 102 = 180 days and from culminating Sirius to culminating Vega there were 589 - 407 = 182 nights. However, the brightly shining pair Capella and Rigel - together with culminating Thuban - had defined another 'Tree': ... Fanciful, assuredly, but neither the Milky Way nor the terrestrial Ganges offered any basis for the imagery of a river flowing to the four quarters of the earth 'for the purification of the three worlds'. One cannot get away from the 'implex' and it is now necessary to consider the tale of a new skeleton map, alias skambha: the equinoctial colure had shifted to a position where it ran through stars of Auriga and through Rigel. Skambha, as we have said, was the World Tree consisting mostly of celestial coordinates, a kind of wildly imaginative armillary sphere. It all had to shift when one coordinate shifted ...
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