TRANSLATIONS

TRANSLATIONS

We had better now return to the glyph dictionary:

The Mamari moon calendar offers a natural point of departure for investigating what use the rongorongo writers had for GD19 type of glyphs:

3
	Ca7-8	Ca7-9	Ca7-10	Ca7-11	Ca7-12

	Ca7-13	Ca7-14	Ca7-15	Ca7-16

Only one haú glyph is found in the calendar, viz. Ca7-15. The number of feather marks are also 15, a number which indicates that the 'season' of full moon has arrived. In Ca7-16 the bulging shape at right depicts the form of the full moon, though yet only partly visible.

The name of the night is Otua (= Atua, God) and the idea presumably is that the gods are assembling, like birds coming down from the sky.

Atua, atu'a

1. Lord, God: te Atua ko Makemake, lord Makemake. Ki a au te Atua o agapó, I had a dream of good omen last night (lit. to me the Lord last night). 2. Gentleman, respectable person; atua Hiva, foreigner. 3. Atua hiko-rega, (old) go-between, person who asks for a girl on another's behalf. 4. Atua hiko-kura, (old) person who chooses the best when entrusted with finding or fetching something. 5. Atua tapa, orientation point for fishermen, which is not in front of the boat, but on the side. Atu'a, behind. Vanaga.

God, devil. T (etua). P Pau., Ta.: atua, god. Mgv.: etua, god, deity, divinity; to be wicked, to be full of wickedness. Mq.: etua, god, divinity. The comprehensiveness of the definition, and the same is found in the Maori, is a question of orthodoxy, merely a matter of the point of view. Of far more moment in our studies is the vowel variety of the initial syllable. Atua: Maori, Mangaia, Tahiti, Hawaii, Tongareva, Rapanui, Paumotu, Samoa, Futuna, Uvea, Niuē, Aniwa. Etua: Marquesas, Mangareva, Rapanui. Otua: Tonga. The Rotumā oiitu is probably referable to aitu. Churchill.

Mq.: atua, the fourteenth day of the moon. Ma.: atua, id. Churchill.

I suggest Otua is a wordplay involving 'o tu'a (the back side). Beyond full moon the waning moon will arrive and the 'season' can be referred to as the 'back side'. The end of waning moon is depicted as a turned around 'person' with the 'back side' forward:

8
	Ca8-22	Ca8-23	Ca8-24	Ca8-25	Ca8-26

	Ca8-27	Ca8-28	Ca8-29	Ca9-1	Ca9-2

Tu'a

1. Back, shoulder, tu'a ivi, shoulder blade; tu'a ivi more, lumbago; moa tu'a ivi raá, 'sun-back chicken': chicken with a yellow back which shines in the sun. 2. Behind (a locative adverb, used with i, ki, a, o, etc). Tu'a-papa, pelvis, hips. Vanaga.

1. Behind, back, rear; ki tua, after; o tua, younger; taki tua, perineum. 2. Sea urchin, echinus. The word must have a germ sense indicating something spinous which will be satisfactorily descriptive of the sea urchin all spines, the prawn with antennae and thin long legs, and in the Maori the shell of Mesodesma spissa. Tuaapapa, haunch, hip, spine. Tuahaigoigo, tattooing on the back. Tuahuri, abortion; poki tuahuri, abortive child. Tuaivi, spine, vertebræ, back, loins; mate mai te tuaivi, ill at ease. Tuakana, elder, elder brother; tuakana tamaahina, elder sister. Tuamouga, mountain summit. Tuatua, to glean. Mgv. tua: To fell, to cut down. Ta.: tua, to cut. Mq.: tua, to fell, to cut down. Ma.: tua, id. Tuaki, to disembowel. Ma.: tuaki, to clean fish. Tuavera, the last breadfruit spoiled by the wind. Ta.: tuavera, burnt by the sun. Churchill.

The back side (tu'a) is the temporal opposite (autumn, waning) of the front side (ra'e). It is the opposition between 'evening shadow' (ata ahiahi) and 'morning shadow' (ata popohaga).

As to Churchills remark oiitu = aitu, I cannot resist the temptation to quote:

"According to Alfred Patterson, the hare tongi were built on [the island of] Hare as places for people to hide from spirits (aitu) which came in from the sea.

E hakamuni ni aitu takapo tai means 'to hide from spirit groups from the sea'. The idea evidently was that people could be seen in normal houses with open sides, whereas they could not be seen by the spirits when the roof came down to the ground.

At [the island of] Touhou, according to Patterson, the people could be protected from the spirits by the ariki priest who resided there but at Hare they had no such protection.

He also stated that the aitu came in from the sea during the middle part of the day, about 11 a.m. to 2 p.m. Hence, women working in the puraka cultivations in the outer islands took care to return to Touhou before the dangerous period started." (Kapingamarangi)

Spirits or gods or devils - same thing: 'full of wickedness'. The full moon 'season' is equal, structurally regarded, to 'full sun' - the 'season' around midday (when aitu come in from the sea).

In Keiti, in the 24th and last period of the calendar for the year, there is a haú glyph (Eb6-12):


Eb5-29	Eb5-30	Eb5-31	Eb5-32	Eb5-33	Eb5-34	Eb5-35

Eb6-1	Eb6-2	Eb6-3	Eb6-4	Eb6-5	Eb6-6

Eb6-7	Eb6-8	Eb6-9	Eb6-10	Eb6-11	Eb6-12	Eb6-13

Eb6-14	Eb6-15	Eb6-16	Eb6-17	Eb6-18	Eb6-19

There are 5 feather marks on the inside of the 'bough' and 12 on the outside. The feathers on the outside presumably refer to the months.

The feathers on the inside (hidden from sun light) presumably stand for 5 extracalendrical days, after the regular 12 * 30 = 360 days in a solar calendar. At one time during the year we can be certain the gods will assemble, during those 5 nights when gods are born.

The observant reader will discover a 13th outside little feather at bottom left. At the 'root' there is a little remnant. Perhaps it is a recognition of the fact that 12 * 30 + 5 days is not enough - every 4th year an extra day must be added.

A calendar based on the yearly movement of the sun (Ra) was once used in Egypt:

"Nut, whom the Greeks sometimes identified with Rhea, was goddess of the sky, but it was debatable if in historical times she was the object of a genuine cult. She was Geb's twin sister and, it was said, married him secretly and against the will of Ra.

Angered, Ra had the couple brutally separated by Shu and afterwards decreed that Nut could not bear a child in any given month of any year. Thoth, Plutarch tells us, happily had pity on her. Playing draughts with the Moon, he won in the course of several games a seventy-second part of the Moon's light with which he composed five new days.

As these five intercalated days did not belong to the official Egyptian calendar of three hundred and sixty days, Nut was thus able to give birth successively to five children: Osiris, Haroeris (Horus), Set, Isis and Nepthys." (Larousse)