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TRANSLATIONS
There is a hole in the 'anthill' Ogotemmêli said. Curiously it was with his feet the eldest of the 8 first entered: '... He put his two feet into the opening of the anthill, that is of the earth's womb, and sank in slowly as if for a parturition a tergo. The whole of him thus entered into the earth, and his head itself disappeared ...' Regeneration implies that the 'fruit' must be buried, that we learnt very early: '... And when the breath has gone from my body and my spirit has departed to the realms of the dead, you are to bury my head carefully near our spring of running water ...' The 'anthill' is a part of Mother Earth, it seems: "... The God Amma, it appeared, took a lump of clay, squeezed it in his hand and flung it from him, as he had done with the stars. The clay spread and fell on the north, which is the top, and from there stretched out to the south, which is the bottom, of the world, although the whole movement was horizontal. The earth lies flat, but the north is at the top. It extends east and west with separate members like a foetus in the womb. It is a body, that is to say, a thing with members branching out from a central mass. This body, lying flat, face upwards, in a line from north to south, is feminine. Its sexual organ is an anthill, and its clitoris a termite hill ..." (Ogotemmêli) Maybe the Polynesian equivalent (Papatuanuku) is lying with her face down because Polynesia is on the other side of the earth? The anthill probably represents the place where sun and other celestial persons disappear to reappear again later as if rejuvenated. '... And now, they learned, it was Maui's idea to enter her very body. He proposed to pass through the womb of Great Hine the Night, and come out by her mouth. If he succeeded, death would no longer have the last word with regard to man; or so his mother had told him long ago. This, then, was to be the greatest of all his exploits ...' However, such a picture surely is based on terrestial events. Elemental observations in an agricultural society come first, celestial similarities are found later. But do they not arrive together? An idea may be generated as the resultant of all experiences. The 'granary' is dark inside and light outside, just as we recently have understood hau tea to be, as for example in Aa3-32 (at spring equinox) where light from the outside is seeping in through the corner at top left:
There is one hole through which sun and all other 'persons' - except possibly the circumpolar stars - disappear and there is another hole through which they reappear, at least as visualized in the Dogon shrine where a snake is slithering in and out again (head first of course):
"... The objects or creatures shown on the left are of the earth. A prominent figure is a serpent who, in Sanga, is the seventh ancestor. He is often depicted as a wavy line, indicating the movement of water, which is also very commonly seen in the form of vertical zigzag lines representing the course of terrestrial streams as well as the way in which the Nummo falls on the earth from heaven in the form of rain ..." (Ogotemmêli) The moon belongs to the earthly (left) side, not to the heavenly (right) side. The sickle observed from a point close to the equator looks like a wooden bowl. ‘... 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 ...’ In the middle, between earth and sky we find the two openings (like nostrils - with moon and sun as the eyes and the door below as the mouth) and above a kind of chequerboard (3 * 8 = 24 = 12 white and 12 black squares): "Above the door of the temple is depicted a chequer-board of white squares alternating with squares the colour of the mud wall. There should strictly be eight rows, one for each ancestor. This chequer-board is pre-eminently the symbol of the 'things of this world' and especially of the structure and basic objects of human organization. It symbolizes: the pall which covers the dead, with its eight strips of black and white squares representing the multiplication of the eight of human families; the façade of the large house with its eighty niches, home of the ancestors; the cultivated fields, patterned like the pall; the villages with streets like seams, and more generally all regions inhabited, cleared or exploited by men. The chequer-board and the covering both portray the eight ancestors." (Ogotemmêli) The serpent perhaps shows the path of the sun: from the tail at bottom right, ascending up to the 'nostril', then disappearing - as if hidden by the disc of the flat earth we live on - to reappear at left for further ascending, and ending with a drooping head (in the west). There is an Egyptian hieroglyph (achet) which resembles the two 'hills' above the chequerboard:
The meaning of achet is 'horizon' and the image is a picture of the sun rising between two mountains in the east. Most interesting is the fact that achet also was used as a symbol for the fire used by the smith (Ref. Wilkinson):
"... 'Where you see the iron hook between the mounds,' said Ogotemmêli, 'is the place where the ancestor smith began to work at his smithy in the primal field.' 'But the hook? What is that?' 'The hook is the anvil. It is buried in a cross-beam.' 'A cross-beam of the roof?' 'No! There is a short piece of wood on the pediment, not to be confused with the roof timbers. It is the symbol of the beam in which the anvil is fixed ..." (Ogotemmêli) I guess the equivalent rongorongo symbol for the fire at the eastern horizon is seen in Aa1-16, Ha5-49, Pa5-32 respective Qa5-40:
In rongorongo the 'Y limbs' seem to correspond to the 'mountains' in Egyptian art. Maybe the 'Y limbs' in Aa1-15 carry the same sign?
Maybe the reason for Aa1-16 not having the 'Y-limbs' is a sign to read together Aa1-15 with Aa1-16, the X-region in the year thereby alluding to the creation of sun at dawn too? |
