TRANSLATIONS
Now I have convinced myself about the central importance of Saturday, and especially then the GD65 glyphs (Hb9-42 and Pb10-47):
A suspicion immediately arrives: What ordinal numbers do they have in the weekly calendars? Hb9-42 (!) is number 26 (and there are 42 glyphs in all in the calender according to H). 26 * 14 = 364 and 16 (i.e. 42 - 26) * 14 = 224 = 364 - 140 = 8 * 28. 42 = 26 + 16, with Sunday having 5 glyphs and Thursday beyond Hb9-42 also having 5 glyphs. Five means fire I am certain of - as the number of fingers on a hand. Monday has 8 glyphs (making us think about the Mamari moon calendar with 8 periods). Saturday has also 8 glyphs, while we have to add the 3 glyphs of Friday to those 5 'fiery' ones after Hb9-42 to reach 8. Tuesday has 3 glyphs too, but adding Wednesdays 6 glyphs we reach the ominous sum 9, and darkness is also what we can read in Hb9-38:
A black-marked oval may express that the fire (of the sun - 6 glyphs in Wednesday) is put out before a new one is kindled in Thursday. Water quenches fire and water is the element of Wednesday. Adding the glyphs after Monday to reach Hb9-42 we get 13, perhaps also an ominous number. Examining P we first find that with 10 glyphs we have covered Sunday + Monday (while there were 13 in H for the same period). Adding together Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday up to (and including Pb10-47) we reach 9 glyphs. From the beginning of the week and up to (and including) Pb10-45 we reach 17 glyphs:
As there may be glyphs missing at the end of the week according to P it is uncertain how many glyphs there once were in Saturday, but if we put a missing manu rere at the end we get 8 (equal to the number in H). The total number of glyphs in the P calendar would then amount to 10 (Sunday + Monday) + 24 (the five remaining days). The five otters trying to steal a fish from the barbecue may be a symbolic picture for the five planets, the moon (the fish) and the sun (the barbecue). Sun and moon should, though, hardly be counted together in the weekly calendars:
Here I have tampered with the location of GD65: I have counted Hb9-42 to 'a.m.' but Pb10-47 to 'p.m.' Not only do we thereby reach 16 in both tablets but there are no 'a.m.' glyphs in P (more than the one initiating Thursday). However, coming so far it becomes rather obvious that the structure in P should be described instead like this:
26 is the fundamental number (which also H exhibits). Not only are there 26 * 14 = 364 days in a year, but 26 seems to have been used as a basic number which other interesting numbers were combined with: 26 + 10 = 36 26 + 16 = 42 26 + 8 = 34 The 8 (?) glyphs of Saturday tell us that Saturday is outside the 26-glyph main group of glyphs. Saturday is a day of temporary death. Temporary death (caused by the kava ceremony) may also be the reason why the H text has 26 as a group ending in the midst of Thursday. Reexamaning the beginning of the Tahua text (on side a) we immediately then understand that 26 appears in Aa1-26 as the last glyph of a.m.:
That we knew already, because of the open hakaturu 'tail' at right, because the Q text ends at this point, because tapa mea is reversed in Aa1-27, because sun is 'death-marked' by the sign of Y, and because the tapa-beater (ike) is hitting him at Poike (noon). By adding 16 to this 26 we reach Aa1-42, which we now understand is the last glyph of the 1st half of the night period. Thereby we define 6 glyphs for the 1st half of the night and 6 glyphs for the 2nd half of the night. Number 42 makes me remember an idea I had some time ago: Consider that the last line on side b in Tahua has 84 glyphs. Consider, furthermore, that 42 and 36 are important signs as indicating 'outside' the main text: Side a has 670 = 200 * π + 42 glyphs and side b has 664 = 200 * π + 36 glyphs; Aa1-36 is the last glyph in the daylight calendar while Ab8-43 marks the 'crossing over place':
We then recapitulate what I once wrote about the triple rhomb type of glyph:
Let us reason the other way around: 84 divided by 3 equals 28 (the number of nights in a month when moon is visible). 14 is twice the weekly number, and 28 = 2 * 14. A rhomb may therefore be understood as the period when moon is shining on the earth. Each side of the rhomb marks a week (not a fortnight which I earlier suggested). Metoro's reaction to this type of glyph (inoino, bad-bad) maybe was because after 84 nights there was needed 6 nights intercalated to reach the sun triple-month period 90 days, a period corresponding to the time for moving from one of the 4 cardinal points (solstices and equinoxes) to the next. Still the standard GD53 with ovals may continue to mean 6 solar months:
However, another solution is to see 3 solar months and an additional day (the vertical straight line) to reach 91 days. Instead of reading 3 solar double-months we may read 3 single solar months + 1 additional day. We now reach a kind of symmetry between the two glyph types:
They both mean a quarter, but the triplet of rhombs measures 3 * 28 = 84 days, whereas the triplet of balls measures 3 * 30 + 1 = 91 days. The difference is a week (7 days). We may then imagine a greater rhomb measuring the whole year (364 days). At each corner of this rhomb we have an extra week, while each side of the rhomb measures 84 days. 4 * (84 + 7) = 364. The solar year, on the other hand, is divided in two halves, with 2 * 91 = 182 days in each half. Such a half could be represented by a double GD53, as e.g. in Aa7-9--10:
Maybe the same sign was used to indicate the Pleiades. One half of the year they are 'above' and the other half of the year they are 'below'. I think this reading of the glyphs is better than what I suggested earlier. But then we must reconsider: The reason for 84 glyphs in lines Ab7 and Ab8 may be to express half a year (measured by the lunar weeks). Neither line Aa1 (with 90 glyphs) nor lines Ab7 and Ab8 (with 84 glyphs) express the extra 1 day respectively the extra 1 week.
Furthermore: In addition to 400 * π we have 36 + 42 = (26 + 10) + (26 + 16) = 3 * 26. Are these 3 comparable to Aa1-13--15? |