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Number 1 surely is male, by reason of which 2 should be female. The conjunction between them is 3:

"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 ..." (Ogotemmêli)

The system of ideas among the Dogon of old was much closer to that in Polynesia of old than either of them compared with our modern ideas - hardly meriting the appellation 'system'.

We remember the Dogon smith arriving from the sky with his hammer and anvil, the shock of meeting (conjunction) with mother earth breaking his arms and legs so that elbows and knees were created:

'During his descent the ancestor still possessed the quality of a water spirit, and his body, though preserving its human appearance, owing to its being that of a regenerated man, was equipped with four flexible limbs like serpents after the pattern of the arms of the Great Nummo.

The ground was rapidly approaching. The ancestor was still standing, his arms in front of him and the hammer and anvil hanging across his limbs. The shock of his final impact on the earth when he came to the end of the rainbow, scattered in a cloud of dust the animals, vegetables and men disposed on the steps.

When calm was restored, the smith was still on the roof, standing erect facing towards the north, his tools still in the same position. But in the shock of landing the hammer and the anvil had broken his arms and legs at the level of elbows and knees, which he did not have before. He thus acquired the joints proper to the new human form, which was to spread over the earth and to devote itself to toil.'

The creation of 'joints' as a result of 'conjunction' may be one of the ideas behind the creation of Aa2-85:

The 'four flexible limbs like serpents' which the 'ancestor' had before his 'descent' were like the 'arms of the Great Nummo'. Instead of legs Great Nummo had a serpent's tail:

"God had further intercourse with his earth-wife, and this time without mishaps of any kind, the excision of the offending member [clitoris] having removed the cause of the former disorder.

Water, which is the divine seed, was thus able to enter the womb of the earth and the normal reproductive cycle resulted in the birth of twins. Two beings were thus formed. God created them like water. They were green in colour, half human beings and half serpents. From the head to the loins they were human: below that they were serpents. Their red eyes were wide open like human eyes, and their tongues were forked like the tongues of reptiles. Their arms were flexible and without joints. Their bodies were green and sleek all over, shining like the surface of water, and covered with short green hairs, a presage of vegetation and germination." (Ogotemmêli)

Is there not a suggestion of a buttock at the right of '1' in Aa2-85?

The 'fire' in the 'smithy' was stolen from the sun:

"All was now ready for departure except that there was no fire in the smithy. The ancestor slipped into the workshop of the great Nummo, who are Heaven's smiths, and stole a piece of the sun in the form of live embers and white-hot iron. He seized it by means of a 'robber's stick' the crook of which ended in a slit, open like a mouth.

He dropped some of the embers, came back to pick them up, and fled towards the granary; but his agitation was such that he could no longer find the entrances.

He made the round of it several times before he found the steps and climbed onto the flat roof, where he hid the stolen goods in one of the skins of the bellows, exclaiming: 'Gouyo!', which is to say. 'Stolen!'.

The word is still part of the language, and means 'granary'. It is a reminder that without the fire of the smithy and the iron of hoes there would be no crops to store." (Ogotemmêli)

The form of the 'smithy' or 'granary' is reminiscent of the ancient zigguraths or sun temples which are spread all over the world:

The plan of the upper storey is horizontal, not vertical, but otherwise agrees in concept with that which is suggested by Graves in The White Goddess:

The hole at the 6th step in the northern façade of the 'granary' corresponds to the missing part 9 in the plan of the upper storey, I think.

Above this hole there are 4 additional steps (including the flat roof of the 'pyramid'), which makes 10 steps. 4 staircases à 10 steps makes 40 together (and 9 * 40 = 360).

Counting from 1 to 8 starts at the ground level moving counterclockwise and then goes up (6 steps?) to the top floor where once again the counting goes counterclockwise. In a way there are 4 + 4 = 8 'parts' - notice the necessity of dividing the south upper part in two (5 and 6). The 9th 'part' is absent (just as if the sun had gone away).

In another way there are 6 + 4 = 10 'parts' in each direction. The Dogon had five-day weeks (and 40 / 5 = 8):

"The mother, after delivery, remains secluded for four (five-day) weeks. She then goes out in the village with the new-born child on her back, and for three weeks she carries in her hand an arrow, if it is a boy, or a knife, if it is a girl, apparently for protection against visible or invisible dangers. Note that these two periods of four and three weeks are the female and the male numbers respectively."

The hole at the 6th step perhaps illustrates that after 6 double-months it is time for the sun to leave:

"Ogotemmêli, having described the structure as a granary, now proceeded to explain its design.

'The whole thing,' he said, 'with its stairways is called the Granary of the Master of Pure Earth. It is divided into eight compartments, four below and four above. The door opens to the north on the sixth stair. It is as it were the mouth, and the granary is the belly, that is the interior, of the world ..."

The idea of 4 below and 4 above reminds me about Matariki i nika and Matariki i raro, and - as a kind of confirmation - we can read:

"The symbolic significance of this structure was as follows: The circular base represented the sun. The square roof represented the sky. A circle in the center of the roof represented the moon.

The tread of each step being female and the rise of each step male, the four stairways of ten steps together prefigured the eight tens of families, offspring of the eight ancestors.

Each stairway held one kind of creature, and was associated with a constellation, as follows: The north stairway, associated with the Pleiades, was for men and fishes; the south stairway, associated with Orion's Belt, was for domestic animals. The east stairway, associated with Venus, was for birds. The west stairway, associated with the so-called 'Long-tailed Star', was for wild animals, vegetables, and insects."

When we read '1' above and '3' below in the middle of side a (as contrasted with '3' above and '1' below in the middle of side b), couldn't there be some kind of allusion to Matariki i nika and i raro?