next page

previous page

up

home

If we now continue by comparing the designs of the glyphs in the first internal parallel, it becomes fairly obvious that those on side a are 'sunny', but not those on side b:

Aa4-13 has a bottom with flames. 4 * 13 = 52 = the number of weeks in a year and honu (GD17) may signify winter solstice time.

The 'beak' at right is 'open', which could mean abruptly discontinued (because the year is 'finished'). I remember having written about such 'beaks' when trying to decide how to define which glyphs should belong to GD11 in the glyph catalogue:

Already the 'beak' as such presumably indicates the carrion bird which will take care of the carcass (of the old period, now 'finished'). Therefore Aa4-13 in a way seems to talk about the 'going away' of the now well fed dark bird. We should remember Rb1-105 and one of the earlier discussions around this subject:

... To extinguish a fire is to kill it. Fire is a strange element not like anything else ... it is moving, it is eating and it is even making noices, 'talking'. It is alive. To make a fire is to make life. To extinguish a fire is to kill. Therefore the pruning-knife, possible to use not only to reap but also for other executions, is an adequate symbol for extinguishing fire.

... That Cronos the emasculator was deposed by his son Zeus is an economical statement: the Achaean herdsmen who on their arrival in Northern Greece had identified their Sky-god with the local oak-hero gained ascendancy over the Pelasgian agriculturalists. But there was a compromise between the two cults. Dionë, or Diana, of the woodland was identified with Danaë of the barley; and that an inconvenient golden sickle, not a bill-hook of flint or obsidian, was later used by the Gallic Druids for lopping the mistletoe, proves that the oak-ritual had been combined with that of the barley-king whom the Goddess Danaë, or Alphito, or Demeter, or Ceres, reaped with her moon-shaped sickle. Reaping meant castration; similarly, the Galla warriors of Abyssinia carry a miniature sickle into battle for castrating their enemies ...

... Without any special effort whatsoever my work with trying to understand the rongorongo texts is flowing on synchronously. Parallel with writing here I am documenting the text of Small Wasington (R) and by coincidence the R-text to a large extent happens to be parallel with the A-text (Tahua). While thinking about the great carrion bird I suddenly saw a complex glyph (Rb1-105) which possibly describes the 'pruning':

Aside from the visual impact there is a kind of affirmation in a parallel text (in triplicate) in Q (but not in H and P), which may tell about 3 'pruning times' during the year:

Somewhat later I added: ... I would now like to return to Rb1-105

which I imagine is showing us 'Saturn' (in bird reincarnation) cutting up the time into two pieces: past (henua at left) and future (henua at right). His attachment to the past is seen in his left (from us seen) foot being attached to the henua at left. His 'fists' probably depict the past year (left) and the new year (right) and he is sitting in the middle, i.e. in the X-area. The new year is holding the 'knife'. Metoro, I happened to notice, probably saw another such 'knife' (i.e. formed like the beak of a carrion bird) in the left (from us seen) 'wing' of this 'turtle' (Ab4-65)

because he said ko motumotu (and motumotu means 'to cut up', according to Churchill) ...

... Maybe the marks on the head of the bird indicates 'fire' (symbolized by feathers) to tell us that we see the Phoenix in action. The trees may then be coconut palms (niu) and we may think of his cutting with 'beak-knife' as making notches ...

The sun flames at bottom of Aa4-13 tells about the new fire, and possibly the bottom part of Aa4-14 is a picture of the 'grill' just having been realighted. The 'grill' may be the former 'broken canoe', now a spirit as indicated by the two open limbs. Sugar canes (tôa) are broken (they are stiff as warriors, tóa):

"There was a young man living in Riu-o-hatu. He planned to make a feast (koro) for his father. For that purpose he raised chickens and had a house built. All his people worked on it. When his koro house was finished, he left his people and went to Ahu-te-peu to call on Tuu-ko-ihu and ask him for a statue. He arrived at Tuu-ko-ihu's place and asked: 'Give me a statue, o king, in loan for the feast in honor of my father.'

The ariki said: 'It is all right.' Tuu-ko-ihu gave him an image. The young man took it and returned to his koro. He broke sugar-cane stalks, dug out yams and sweet potatoes and put bananas in a ditch. He lit the oven and put in it fowls, yams, and sweet potatoes. Some people sang riu chants, others, ei chants and others a te atua.

They took all the foods - bananas, sugar cane, fowls - to the koro house. They set up the image at the door of the koro house, and the people went to admire this image. They spent three days in the koro house. This koro house was nice, and the people ate plenty of sugar cane and bananas.

I suspect that sugar canes are male in character (straight and stiff), while bananas are female (soft and bent).

(picture from Wikipedia)

When the koro was finished, the young man stayed there. The third day, the koro caught fire. Men, women, and children shouted: 'The koro is burning, the koro is burning.'

This cry sounded at Hanga-roa, at Motu-tautara, at Ahu-te-peu. Tuu-ko-ihu heard it and said: 'O my brother 'The jumping-little-bird' (piu-hekerere) jump!'

A servant of Tuu-ko-ihu was sent to Riu-o-hatu. When the young man saw him, he said: 'Your image is burnt up.'

The servant said: 'No, it did not burn.' He looked for it and found it lying far away. The servant called the owner of the koro and said. 'Here is your image.' He returned it to Tuu-ko-ihu." (Métraux)

This simple little story contains important clues. First we observe 3 + 3 = 6 days, the first 3 days when the feast is ongoing and the latter 3 days afterwards, when the young man (curiously without being given a name) lives alone in the koro house.

6 means the sun, very clearly so when we see the division into two groups of three (double-months). However, 6 may also refer to those extra 6 days needed at leap year (366 - 360). The jumping-little-bird then should be the new year born beyond the regular 360 days. He must jump across the gap between 366 and 1.

The father is obviously dead and we guess he is the old year. A feast (koro) commemorating him is the fundament of the story.

In Churchill 2 we find most interesting evidence. Koro is not just any feast, but may originally be the death-of-the-old-year feast. The circle is closed, and I cannot but feel that basically this feast is a replica of an older new moon feast, i.e. that Whiro and viri mean the same thing:

... According to Makemson some of the names of Mercury are the following:

... As to the meaning of vi (in Tavi) I suggest that it is alluding to viri:

The sense of coiling up is a very precise appellation of what goes on in the X-area:

... In rongorongo rays of sunlight are visualized with three vertical straight lines (GD41). Such rays are used as 'poles' marking limits in time/space (GD37). At the time of new year, e.g., there will be two such 'poles', one marking the end of the old year and another marking the beginning of the new year (Takurua). This structure is - I think - used at the beginnings and ends of all periods. At the time of new year the 4th corner of the 'earth' is located. It is time to detronise the old year and the dark hair of a woman is used to wrap it up. This happens in the 5th 'dark period' beyond the 4th quarter, a time when gods are born. The Chinese sign for number 5 is said to derive from the picture of a thread-reel.

I.e. the same method must be used to 'detronise' also the first half of a double-hour of day-light. (We always count periods in even numbers, a method used at first with 59 nights for a double-month and later reused for all time periods - also years.) When one 'ruler' is exchanged for another, a weak old one going away and a newborn 'ruler' - also weak - is arriving, there is room for freedom. The power from above is limited because of weakness ...

The koro house 'caught fire', a description reminiscent of how the Maya and Aztec peoples symbolically cleaned the table. I think the house did not ignite by itself, somebody caused the fire:

... When it was evident that the years lay ready to burst into life, everyone took hold of them, so that once more would start forth - once again - another (period of) fifty-two years. Then (the two cycles) might proceed to reach one hundred and four years. It was called 'One Age' when twice they had made the round, when twice the times of binding the years had come together. Behold what was done when the years were bound - when was reached the time when they were to draw the new fire, when now its count was accomplished. First they put out fires everywhere in the country round. And the statues, hewn in either wood or stone, kept in each man's home and regarded as gods, were all cast into the water. Also (were) these (cast away) - the pestles and the (three) hearth stones (upon which the cooking pots rested); and everywhere there was much sweeping - there was sweeping very clear. Rubbish was thrown out; none lay in any of the houses ...

... According to Codex Fejérváry-Mayer, a prehispanic Mesoamerican manuscript, Xiuhtecuhtli was considered, 'Mother and Father of the Gods, who dwells in the center of earth'. At the end of the Aztec century (52 years), the gods were thought to be able to end their covenant with humanity. Feasts were held in honor of Xiuhtecuhtli to keep his favors, and human sacrifices were burned after removing their heart ...

Although it is not stated in these two accounts that houses were burnt, I remember having read somewhere that the Maya each 52 years destroyed their houses to build new ones, which I think is a good way to keep the art of housebuilding alive.

"In the arabesque of interlaced motifs, one can mark those where the theme of 'pulling down the structure' is in evidence. The powerful Maori hero Whakatau, bent on vengeance,

laid hold of the end of the rope which had passed round the posts of the house, and, rushing out, pulled it with all his strenght, and straightaway the house fell down, crushing all within it, so that the whole tribe persihed, and Whakatau set it on fire.

This is familiar. At least one such event comes down dimly from history. It happened to the earliest meetinghouse of the Pythagorean sect, and it is set down as a sober account of the outcome of a political conflict, but the legend of Pythagoras was so artfully constructed in early times out of prefabricated materials that doubt is allowable.

The essence of true myth is to masquerade behind seemingly objective and everyday details borrowed from known circumstances ..." (Hamlet's Mill)

The name of the Maori hero, Whakatau, certainly should be divided into haka and tau, where haka is the causative prefix. Whakatau means 'to make tau'. We are here close to why Metoro said toa tau-uru for the measures of the night, I think.

In Métraux I just (synchronously) happened to read about the crucial word uru:

"The low entrances of houses were guarded by images of wood or of bark cloth, representing lizards or rarely crayfish.

The bark cloth images were made over frames of reed, and were called manu-uru, a name given also to kites, masks, and masked people ..."

The lizard (moko) and the crayfish (ura) seem to be interchangeable, both having their place at the entrance of the 'house' (i.e. at e.g. new year). The crayfish is red and therefore food for the gods who will appear at the feast.

... In the romance of Diarmuid and Grainne, the rowan berry, with the apple and the red nut, is described as the food of the gods. 'Food of the gods' suggests that the taboo on eating anything red was an extension of the commoners' taboo on eating scarlet toadstools - for toadstools, according to a Greek proverb which Nero quoted, were 'the food of the gods'. In ancient Greece all red foods such as lobster, bacon, red mullet, crayfish and scarlet berries and fruit were tabooed except at feasts in honour of the dead. (Red was the colour of death in Greece and Britain during the Bronze Age - red ochre has been found in megalithic burials both in the Prescelly Mountains and on Salisbury Plain.) ...

I think we may be fairly certain that uru in toa tauuru means that there is a kind of masquerade - that the glyphs are not to be understood as real tóa warriors hanging upside down (îka, fish). They are not human beings temporarily dead soon to quicken again like rau hei (mimosa branches). The toa tauuru are instead important elements in the 'house frame' of the night, i.e. the true meaning is masked by the toa glyphs.

I imagine that there may be some kind of description of the establishing of a new 'house' frame for the year among the glyphs at the beginning of side b. If so, then the GD25 (pure) glyphs could be these key glyphs:

We should (temporarily) finish here by repeating what I earlier have written about GD25 in the glyph dictionary: