TRANSLATIONS
The red 'hats' (pukao) of
the great stone statues on Easter Island surely must be there to
signify a similarity with the sun. We remember how van Tilburg
explained their function:
The
higher-ranked of the two largest political units on
Rapa Nui was the Ko Tu'u Aro Ko Te Mata
Nui. This literally translates as The
Mast/Pillar/Post [standing] Before the Greater
Tribes.
Toko te
rangi,
or Sky Propper, is named by Métraux in his corrected
Miru genealogy as the thirteenth king of
Easter Island and as one of the lineages or
subgroups of the Miru. Although we have no
record of the Sky Propper legend on Rapa Nui,
other Polynesian legends of the Sky Propper are
widely known, and they are formative elements in the
basic cosmogenic theory of Polyesian beleif.
Sky (rangi)
and Earth (papa) lay in primal embrace, and
in the cramped, dark space between them procreated
and gave birth to the gods such as Tane,
Rongo and Tu. Just as children fought
sleep in the stifling darkness of a hare paenga,
the gods grew restless between their parents and
longed for light and air. The herculean achievement
of forcing Sky to separate from Earth was variously
peformed by Tane in New Zealand and the
Society Islands, by Tonofiti in the Marquesas
and by Ru (Tu) in Cook Islands.
After
the sky was raised high above the earth, props or
poles were erected between them and light entered,
dispelling the darkness and bringing renewed life.
One detail which is iconographically of interest is
whether the god responsible for separating Earth and
Sky did so by raising the Sky with his upraised arms
and hands, as in Tahiti and elsewhere, or with his
feet as in New Zealand.
The
actual props, pillars or posts which separated the
sky and earth are called toko in New Zealand,
to'o in the Marquesas Islands and pou
in Tahiti. In Rapanui tuu and pou are
known, with pou meaning column, pillar or
post of either stone or wood. Sometimes the word is
applied to a natural rock formation with postlike
qualities which serves as an orientation point.
The
star Sirius is called Te Pou in Rapanui
and functions in the same way.
One
monolithic basalt statue is called Pou
Hakanononga, a somewhat obscure and probably
late name thought to mean that the statue served to
mark an offshore tuna fishing site.
The
Rapanui word tokotoko means pole or
staff. Sacred ceremonial staves, such as the ua
on Rapa Nui, were called toko in
Polynesia.
Based
upon the fact that toko in New Zealand also
means 'rays of light', it has been suggested that
the original props which separated and held apart
Sky and Earth were conceived of as shafts of dawn
sunlight.
In most
Polynesian languages the human and animate
classifier is toko-, suggesting a congruence
of semantic and symbolic meaning between
anthropomorphic form and pole or post. Tane
as First Man and the embodiment of sunlight thus
becomes, in the form of a carved human male figure,
the probable inspiration for the moai as
sacred prop between Sky and Earth.
The
moai as Sky Propper would have elevated Sky and
held it separate from Earth, balancing it only upon
his sacred head. This action allowed the light to
enter the world and made the land fertile.
Increasing the height of the statues, as the Rapa
Nui clearly did over time, would symbolically
increase the space between Sky and Earth, ensuring
increased fertility and the greater production of
food. The proliferating image, consciously or
unconsciously, must have visually (and reassuringly)
filled the dangerously empty horizon between sea and
land, just as the trees they were so inexorably
felling once had. |
A thought creeps in:
The 4 'arms' (or moa) pushing the spring sun up in
Aa1-5--8 are curious, because they do not conform to the normal
pattern 3 + 1:
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Aa1-1 |
Aa1-2 |
Aa1-3 |
Aa1-4 |
tagata ui |
ki
tona marama |
e
tagata noho ana - i te ragi |
te
tagata - hakamaroa ana i te ragi |
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Aa1-5 |
Aa1-6 |
Aa1-7 |
Aa1-8 |
ko
te moa |
e
noho ana ki te moa |
e
moa te erueru |
e
moa te kapakapa |
In the parallel
texts the 4th 'arms' are different:
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Ha5-29 |
Ha5-30 |
Ha5-31 |
Ha5-32 |
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Pa5-11 |
Pa5-12 |
Pa5-13 |
Pa5-14 |
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Qa5-19 |
Qa5-20 |
Qa5-21 |
Qa5-22 |
Maybe the carver of Tahua
(a fairly recent tablet) had an ambition to express ideas
he had learned from European minds?
Our names for the
months in autumn, September, October, November, and December,
are equal to the 7th, the 8th, the 9th, and the 10th month
respectively. Even our forefathers evidently used a system with 10 months. These
last 4 months of the year will on Easter Island be
relocated to the period immediately before summer solstice.
There is nothing in
the European names for these 4 months to distinguish between them (i.e.
no more
than the numeral). Therefore they can be pictured alike.
Before September we
have July and August, which the inquisitive creator of Tahua
may have been informed about too. These names are fetched from
Roman history, two emperors (Julius Caesar and Augustus).
Expressed in the idiom of rongorongo that should be
expressed with ragi (GD22).
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Aa1-3 |
Aa1-4 |
e
tagata noho ana - i te ragi |
te
tagata - hakamaroa ana i te
ragi |
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Ha5-27 |
Ha5-28 |
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Pa5-9 |
Pa5-10 |
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Qa5-17 |
Qa5-18 |
Ragi
1. Sky, heaven, firmament; ragi
moana, blue sky. 2. Cloud; ragipuga,
cumulus; ragitea, white, light clouds;
ragi poporo, nimbus; ragi hoe ka'i cirrus
(literally: like sharp knives); ragi viri,
overcast sky; ragi kerekere, nimbus stratus;
ragi kirikiri miro, clouds of various
colours. 3. To call, to shout, to exclaim. Vanaga.
1. Sky, heaven, firmament,
paradise; no te ragi, celestial. 2. Appeal,
cry, hail, formula, to invite, to send for, to
notify, to felicitate, precept, to prescribe, to
receive, to summon; ragi no to impose;
ragi tarotaro, to menace, to threaten; tagata
ragi, visitor; ragikai, feast, festival;
ragitea, haughty, dominating. 3.
Commander.
4. To love, to be affectionate, to spare, sympathy,
kind treatment; ragi kore, pitiless; ragi
nui, faithful. Churchill. |
Back to the red hats and what
Métoro has to say about the matter:
"The heads of many
of the statues on the terraces once bore a big cylinder (hau
hitirau moai), made of red vesicular tuff ...
The lower surface
has a slight depression which fitted over the top of the image's
head. This concavity is not in the center, but near one side so
that the cylinder projected over the eyes ... Such a disposition
was obeerved by Gonzalez' men ...:
The diameter of the
crown is much greater than that of the head on which it rests,
and its lower edge projects greatly beyond the forehead of the
figure: a position which excites wonder that it does not fall.
I was able to clear up this difficulty on making an examination
of another smaller statue from whose head there projected a kind
of tenon, constructed to fit into a sort of slot or mortice
corresponding to it in the crown; so that by this device the
latter is sustained notwithstanding its overlapping the
forehead.
Roggeveen ...
mistook the hats for baskets ... The present natives
call the cylinders hau hitirau moai. Hitirau is
the name of the tuff from which these cylinders are made ...
Jaussen ... gives
the word pukao which in Roussel's dictionary means crown.
The original meaning of pukao is topknot ..."
Probably the headgear often seen in
GD63 (ariki) glyphs corresponds to the 'pukao'. I
have picked out some examples which show how the 'feather crown'
protrudes:
Some of them exhibit
Y, although in front instead of at the expected back. Anyhow, what we see
at the top of these chiefs - I think - is a headgear in form of
a crown with embedded red or yellow feathers to symbolize the
rays of the sun, in other words GD19. The two main forms
of GD19 (oval respective crest) presumably explains the two main
forms of ariki headgear:
GD19 must be labelled hau,
that is statistically secured:
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Ba2-2 |
Ba2-4 |
Ba2-7 |
Ba2-11 |
Ba2-16 |
Ba2-20 |
Ba2-27 |
o tona
haú |
ki to ona o te
haú |
ki toona o te
haú |
hau ia |
e kua
haú ia |
kua
hau i tona
hau |
kua
haú i te
haú o te nuku |
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haú
= 8 / 8 |
Ba2-31 |
mai tae
hahaú ia |
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Bb2-19 |
Bb4-7 |
Bb4-8 |
Bb4-9 |
Bb9-28 |
Bb10-19 |
Bb11-34 |
kia iri vage
rei - toona mea |
kua hakaturou |
koia ra e
hakaturou e |
kua oho mai i
te maro |
kua
hahaú ia koia |
ka
hahaú hia |
kua haga ki to
mea - e ka hahaú
hia |
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haú=
7 / 11 |
Bb12-2 |
Bb12-16 |
Bb12-19 |
Bb12-39 |
e tagata
hakapuo - i te haú |
mai tae
haú hia |
haú hia |
ki te rima - o
to haú |
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