TRANSLATIONS

TRANSLATIONS

My subconsious mind (kuhane) early in the morning has a chance to deliver some message to my slowly awakening senses. The message she told now was a picture (which is the only mode of speaking she has) of a steep mountain with water flowing down everywhere.

I realized she meant Akapana:

"... I walked towards it now, and spent some time strolling around it and clambering over it. Originally it had been a clean-sided step-pyramid of earth faced with large andesite blocks. In the centuries since the conquest, however, it had been used as a quarry by builders from as far away as La Paz, with the result that only about ten per cent of its superb facing blocks now remained.

What clues, what evidence, had those nameless thieves carried off with them? As I climbed up the broken sides and around the deep grassy troughs in the top of the Akapana, I realized that the true function of the pyramid was probably never going to be understood.

All that was certain was that it had not been merely decorative or ceremonial. On the contrary, it seemed almost as though it might have functioned as some kind of arcane 'device' or machine. Deep within its bowels, archaeologists had discovered a complex network of zigzagging stone channels, lined with fine ashlars.

These had been meticulously angled and jointed (to a tolerance of one-fiftieth of an inch), and had served to sluice water down from a large reservoir at the top of the structure, through a series of descending levels, to a moat that encircled the entire site, washing against the pyramid's base on its southern side ..." (Hancock)

Akapana is situated in the south (toga).

My thoughts then went on to the emergence of the sun beetle from the Hathor (necropolis) mountain, as illustrated in the Egyptian picture:

Hathor (Sirius) is important. Her belt (the cycle around the middle - perhaps seen in the picture as the circle around the beetle) was needed for the faraoh to be Faraoh:

... The king, wearing now a short, stiff archaic mantle, walks in a grave and stately manner to the sanctuary of the wolf-god Upwaut, the 'Opener of the Way', where he anoints the sacred standard and, preceded by this, marches to the palace chapel, into which he disappears. A period of time elapses during which the pharaoh is no longer manifest.

When he reappears he is clothed as in the Narmer palette, wearing the kilt with Hathor belt and bull's tail attatched. In his right hand he holds the flail scepter and in his left, instead of the usual crook of the Good Shepherd, an object resembling a small scroll, called the Will, the House Document, or Secret of the Two Partners, which he exhibits in triumph, proclaiming to all in attendance that it was given him by his dead father Osiris, in the presence of the earth-god Geb.

'I have run', he cries, 'holding the Secret of the Two Partners, the Will that my father has given me before Geb. I have passed through the land and touched the four sides of it. I traverse it as I desire.' ...

In a way it resembles the kuhane of Hau Maka, covering the whole territory during the night ...

The two partners initially surely were not Upper and Lower Egypt but the two halves of the year. This time, when I look at the picture, I notice that the roof at left has 2 layers, while the roof at right has only one. The 2nd half respectively the 1st half of the year, I guess. Y for the 2nd half means (among other things of course) 2.

... In the upper part of the façade, as a pendant to the calabash on the right which represents the sun, it is a drawing of the moon, either full or as a crescent. This is a reminder, on the left-hand side, of the celestial regions. In the remaining space on the wall there are various ritual objects and animals in no particular order: the priest's forked staff, which is a symbol of both masculinity and femininity; the shaft itself, which is breast-high, is male, the female part is the fork in which the priest rests his forefinger, itself a symbol of the male ...

The mountain at left in the picture looks as if the creator designed it to be the hind quarters of the Hathor cow. The billowing lines flows downwards and in between them we see many dots. I think this is meant to illustrate flowing water. In another Egyptian picture dot lines definitely are watery:

... 8 stylized sun men (I think) dig in Mother Earth. The heads of these men are bigger at bottom than higher up. Also their penises show differences depending on season.

There are two streams of water on each side, from the two goddesses. Between the two holes (or suns as Wilkinson suggests) there are 9 streams of water too, and even the two 'mountains' giving birth to the sun at the top of the picture is watery in character. Those 9 streams are like the 9 months of pregnancy. If we regard each month as having 28 days (when moon is visible), then we will have 9 * 4 = 36 weeks in such a period, quite in harmony with those 360 days in a solar year.

In old Babylonia they thought that it was the sky which had two holes ('doors') through which sun entered in the morning and left in the evening. The Egyptian picture above seems also to have a circular sky with holes in it. On the other hand the two mountains through which sun is born in the morning implies that he comes from the underworld, i.e. through some hole in the earth.

The male instrument might vary and so the female. Hatchet is a small axe, the egg needs to be hatched. Not only fresh wood but also water is female. At sea the canoes are paddled and at that time the male instrument is the paddle ...

... Ha6-6 is composed by two glyph types fused together, toki te ragi (GD32) and haga (GD36):


GD32	GD36	Ha6-6

Is there a sign too, the pointed 'jaw' in Ha6-6? Yes, presumably there is ...

... The 'jaw' is similar to a toki. Toki is an instrument for working in wood, a male instrument. The sexual overtones are there. And we could also relate this train of thought to Ha6-3:

...In reference to your question, 'How do the natives of Easter Island obtain fire?' I [Mr. Croft] have to answer that they cannot tell. Their forefathers, like the ancient Romans, had their 'vestal' fires, preserved from ancient times; but the 'Vestal Virgins' of Easter Island were gray-headed and gray-bearded old heathen priests. It was a part of their duty, sacredly attended to, to guard the eternal fire, which was neutral, together with its guardians, in all wars.

From this sacred fire the whole community - at one time a large one - could obtain that useful 'element' from time to time, as they needed it, for culinary and other purposes. This custom is still kept up by a portion of the community, while another portion rely on the matches of Mr. Dutrou-Bornier for their supply. Another portion of the community have learned from Gambier Islanders (who were sent there by the Catholics, to assist the priests) how to make fire: not by rubbing two sticks together, as you ask in your letter, but by rubbing the point of one stick on the side of the other, until it makes a hot groove and eventually fire - a work generally of from five to ten minutes. In order to illustrate this, I have had a photograph taken for you, showing you the natives in the very act of producing fire, and have also sent you the identical sticks used on that occasion.

You will notice that the wood is of a soft and spongy nature. It grows abundantly on these islands, and is a variety known as the Hibiscus tiliaceus, and called by the natives 'Purau' and 'Fau', pronounced 'Purow' and 'Fow', 'ow' being sounded as in the word 'how'. You can, if you wish, obtain large quantities of it, by going on board the vessels carrying oranges from these islands to San Francisco; the orange crates are mostly made of it. And you could also get one of the Tahitian or other islanders, sailors on board of such vessels, to make fire for you by the aid of these sticks, and thus practically or ocularly answer your own question, as they are all experienced in the art ...

... Not only fresh wood but also water is female. At sea the canoes are paddled and at that time the male instrument is the paddle, remarkably also called hoe:

1. Paddle. 2. To wheeze with fatigue (oeoe 2). 3. Blade, knife; hoe hakaiu, clasp-knife, jack-knife; hoe hakanemu, clasp-knife; hoe pikopiko, pruning knife. Churchill.

T. Paddle. E hoe te heiva = 'and to paddle (was their) pleasure'. Henry.

There is an old Egyptian picture which surely must be telling some similar story. Here the instrument is not an adze (or a jaw) but a kind of agricultural tool (henen) ...

... Wilkinson ...talks about burials and the ancient custom to hoe the earth at those times. He thinks that possibly the two circular shapes (in the larger circle) are suns. It reminds us - I think - about the rongorongo glyph type GD24:

We now understand that the mountain with two peaks at the top also has water inside.

... Wilkinson says that in chapter 109 of the Book of the Dead two 'turquios sycomores' are standing at the eastern gate of the sky, where the sungod Ra enters. The sycomore was a manifestation of the 3 goddesses Nut, Isis, and Hathor, a manifestation by the name 'The Sycomore Lady' ...

The water inside the mountain is not randomly distributed but follows 'well' defined circuits:

... In the inscriptions of Dendera, published by Dümichen, the goddess Hathor is called 'lady of every joy'. For once, Dümichen adds: Literally ... 'the lady of every heart circuit'. This is not to say that the Egyptians had discovered the circulation of the blood. But the determinative sign for 'heart' often figures as the plumb bob at the end of a plumb line coming from a well-known astronomical or surveying device, the merkhet. Evidently, 'heart' is something very specific, as it were the 'center of gravity' ... See Aeg.Wb. 2, pp. 55f. for sign of the heart (ib) as expressing generally 'the middle, the center'.

And this may lead in quite another direction. The Arabs preserved a name for Canopus - besides calling the star Kalb at-tai-man ('heart of the south') ... Suhail el-wezn, 'Canopus Ponderosus', the heavy-weighing Canopus, a name promptly declared meaningless by the experts, but which could well have belonged to an archaic system in which Canopus was the weight at the end of the plumb line, as befitted its important position as a heavy star at the South Pole of the 'waters below'.

Here is a chain of inferences which might or might not be valid, but it is allowable to test it, and no inference at all would come from the 'lady of every joy'. The line seems to state that Hathor (= Hat Hor, 'House of Horus') 'rules' the revolution of a specific celestial body - whether or not Canopus is alluded to - or, if we can trust the translation 'every', the revolution of all celestial bodies. As concerns the identity of the ruling lady, the greater possibility speaks for Sirius, but Venus cannot be excluded; in Mexico, too, Venus is called 'heart of the earth'. The reader is invited to imagine for himself what many thousands of such pseudo-primitive or poetic interpretations must lead to: a disfigured interpretation of Egyptian intellectual life ...

... The whole of him thus entered into the earth, and his head itself disappeared. But he left on the ground, as evidence of his passage into that world, the bowl which had caught on the edges of the opening. All that remained on the anthill was the round wooden bowl, still bearing traces of the food and the finger-prints of its vanished owner, symbol of his body and of his human nature, as, in the animal world, is the skin which a reptile has shed.

Liberated from his earthly condition, the ancestor was taken in charge by the regenerating Pair. The male Nummo led him into the depths of the earth, where, in the waters of the womb of his partner he curled himself up like a foetus and shrank to germinal form, and acquired the quality of water, the seed of God and the essence of the two Spirits.

And all this process was the work of the Word. The male with his voice accompanied the female Nummo who was speaking to herself and to her own sex. The spoken Word entered into her and wound itself round her womb in a spiral of eight turns. Just as the helical band of copper round the sun gives to it its daily movement, so the spiral of the Word gave to the womb its regenerative movement. Thus perfected by water and words, the new Spirit was expelled and went up to Heaven ...

Once upon a time there was a cosmos evidently shared by all humans spread over the earth. This cosmos had a watery female mountain far up in the 'north'. On Easter Island they probably understood that, though they located the mountain in the south (toga). This is what my kuhane taught me to understand.

Furthermore, the recapitulation of pictures and words made me realize that the growing (1st) phase of the year beyond the mountain is imprinted by the 'jaw' of Muri Ranga Whenua. Her 'jaw' is necessary for igniting new fire:

The jaw in Ha6-6 for example: '... Is there a sign too, the pointed 'jaw' in Ha6-6? Yes, presumably there is ... The 'jaw' is similar to a toki. Toki is an instrument for working in wood, a male instrument. The sexual overtones are there. And we could also relate this train of thought to Ha6-3:

There is a tremendous amount of ideas swarming around the 1st phase of the year. Yet I cannot focus on more than one facet at once. The jaw means the left over part of the old henua. Regeneration presumes an earlier generation.

We remember the Mayan numbers beyond 12:

The jawbones have the form of Y and we note that at 18 there suddenly is a reversal of the orientation of the bone - presumably because the sun turns around after 180 days.

I believe Heyerdahl is correct in his view that the Polynesians (all three kinds: Maori, Pakepakeha and Manahune) migrated from America into the Pacific. Therefore we need support from American pictures and myths.

As to the process of making fire I have just read about such things in "From Honey to Ashes":

"... The myths refer to two techniques: friction or gyration, and percussion. According to M259, the fire which is now produced by friction was originally the fire vomited up by the frog, while M266 tells us that it was the crane, a bird to which another Guiana myth attributes a strong tendency to defecate, which instigated fire-kindling by percussion. Between these two myths, a third occupies an intermediary position:

M272. Taulipang. 'The origin of fire'

In olden times, when men still knew nothing of fire, there lived an old woman called Pelénosamó.

One wonders if not the Hawaiian fire-mountain Pele has her name from Pelénosamó.

... According to Henry (1928, p. 115), also Tahitian folklore often spoke of Hawaii Island as Havai'i-a, or 'Burning Havai'i', due to its volcano which was formerly always brightly burning ...

She piled wood up in her hearth and squatted on it. Flames then spurted from her anus and the wood caught fire. She ate her manioc cooked, whereas other people left theirs out in the heat of the sun.

A little girl betrayed the old woman's secret. As she refused to give the fire, her arms and legs were bound, she was placed on some wood and her anus was forced open. Whereupon she excreted the fire, which changed into wató (= fire) stones, which make fire when they are rubbed together ...

... It is well known that fire-kindling techniques by gyration (or by friction) have a sexual connotation in various parts of the world, and certainly in South America: the passive wood is said to be female, the stick which is rotated, or moved back and forwards, is said to be male.

The rhetoric used in the myth transposes this instantly and universally recognizable sexual symbolism by giving it imaginary expression, since the sexual act (copulation) is replaced by a phenomenon relating to the digestive apparatus (vomiting).

Furthermore, the female who is passive on the symbolic level becomes active on the imaginary level, and the organs respectively concerned are in one instance the vagina, in the other the mouth, both definable in terms of a contrast between low and high, and both being at the same time anterior (along an axis the other pole of which is occupied by posterior orifices):

symbolic level		*imaginary level*
O, passive	→	O, active
anterior	→	anterior
low	→	high

In the matter of fire-kindling techniques by percussion, ethnography provides no symbolic representations, the intuitive obviousness and general validity of which are comparable to those we have just mentioned.

But M272, reinforced by the recurrent position occupied by the crane in the myths (the old woman who excretes, the bird which excretes, both of them masters of fire-making by percussion), enables us to deduce the unknown symbolism of this technique from its imaginary expression, which is all we have to go by.

We merely have to apply the same transformation rules as we did in the preceding case, where they were empirically verifiable. We thus obtain the following equations:

*imaginary level*		symbolic level
O, active	→	O, passive
posterior	→	posterior
low	→	high

Which organ, then, can be defined as posterior and high in a system in which the posterior, low position is occupied by the anus, and the anterior, high position by the mouth?

We have no choice; it can only be the ear ... It follows, therefore, that on the imaginary (that is the mythic) level, vomiting is the opposite correlative to coitus, and defecation the opposite correlative of auditory communication.

It is at once clear how experience confirms the hypothesis obtained by deduction; percussion is noisy, friction is silent. This explains why it was the crane which initiated the former ... for throughout the entire American continent and in other parts of the world too, myths are fond of introducing the crane because of its harsh cry²³ ...

²³ The cranes themselves seem to share this view, since an instance is quoted in which one of these birds, on losing its mate, developed a sentimental attachment to an iron bell, the sound of which reminded it of the cry of the absent bird ...

As regards the harsh call of the crane in the myths of North America ... 'of all birds the Sandhill crane is the loudest and noisiest'. The Chippewa believe that members of the crane clan have powerful voices and are the tribe's orators ...

As regards China ... 'The sound of the drum is heard as far away as Lo-yang when a white crane (italics in the text) flies right into the Gate of Thunder', and the reference to the Pi-fang bird, which 'resembles a crane, dances on one foot and produces fire' ...

It is all the more legitimate to emphasize these parallels since there is an anatomical, hence objective, basis for the crane family's reputation for noise. 'In most species the wind-pipe is convoluted in the males (not always in the females), entering behind the clavicles into a hollow space in the keel of the sternum' ..."

(Wikipedia: crane on turtle - Hanoi)

The long legs of the crane are divided into sections, and I can count to 9 bulges on each leg. 360 / 18 = 20. Probably their year is divided into 18 periods of 20 days, I think.

One leg on each side of the turtle shell suggest that the shell symbolizes the year divided into 2 half-years.

Why is a crane standing on the turtle? Applying the ideas of Lévi-Strauss I suppose the answer is: At winter solstice there is a turtle and there are also loud noices (drums, hootings, bells ringing, and the cracking of fireworks).

Furthermore, the need of new fire should involve a turtle:

"... the tortoise cannot be burnt ... a characteristic which is confirmed objectively by ethnography, since the wolf's trick [in M192] of trying to cook the tortoise while it was lying on its back is based on a method which may seem barbarous but is still current in central Brazil: the tortoise is so difficult to kill that the peasants cook it alive among the hot wood cinders, with its own shell acting as the cooking-dish; the process may last several hours, because the poor beast takes so long to die ..." (From Honey to Ashes)

The celestial fires must surely be superhuman in intensity and greatness, therefore a turtle is needed at the bottom to function as an insulator, so as not the whole world will take fire.

Todays newspaper tells about the eel that it does not like the sun. When sun goes down in the evening the eel is immediately revitalized from his slumber at the bottom in the mud. The eel is a beast of the dark, a kind of polar opposite to the sun. I therefore guess it may be the sign of the eel we see for example at bottom left in Eb7-10:

Niu (GD18) - the world tree - presumably is twirled around and changing direction at winter solstice.