next page

previous page

up

home

The shape of moko makes me think about the 'sun-fish':

... The image is that of a reed boat with a whale's or sea monster's head at the bow, and a skull-like mask at the stern. At the top of the stern is a five-sided umu, or Easter Island fireplace, and on deck is a hare paenga, or lenticular reed house, with a square doorway on the starboard side. On the same side, a wide channel surrounded by a V-shaped groove leads down from the deck aft ...

The skull-like mask at the stern, together with a five-sided umu, clearly indicates that at the 'tail' the light must be 'finished' and a new fire alighted.

The gigantic head-piece of 'Xiuhtecuhtli, the fire god, as Huehueteotl, the old god at the centre' looks as if it has 5 sides too:

The severly bent back of the old god at the centre does not resemble the smoother bending of the sun-fish. As I imagine it, the smooth bending of the sun-fish represents the gradual change over half a year.

The 6 balls under the fish may mean 6 solar months (not as I thought earlier 6 solar double-months).

If the sun-fish means the light half-year, then the moko probably means the dark half-year. That is what I suggest. The sun-fish bends one way and the moko the complementary way.

The moko means dark and underground, while a fish may mean light and up above.

That moko (lizard) has to do with darkness is rather obvious from what we have seen earlier:

…according to a legend told in Hawaii, when a man named Ulu, dwelling near the present city of Hilo, died of famine. He and his wife had a sickly baby boy whose life was endangered by the general scarcity of food, and the man, distracted, had gone in prayer to the temple at Puueo, to learn from the god what should be done. Now the god of that temple was of a type known in Hawaiian as the mo'o: which is a word meaning 'lizard', or 'reptile'. But the only reptile in Hawaii is a harmless, even affectionately regarded little lizard that scurries up and down the walls of people's houses and clings like a fly to ceilings, trapping insects with its quick tongue ...

... When Tuu Ko Ihu came out and sat on the stone underneath which he had buried the skull, Ure Honu shot into the house like a lizard. He lifted up the one side of the house. Then Ure Honu let it fall down again; he had found nothing. Ure Honu called, 'Dig up the ground and continue to search!'

... Kena, the name for the booby, is also an eastern Polynesian name. Line 18 of the creation chant lists as the mythical parents of kena 'Vie Moko' and 'Vie Tea' (PH:520). The 'lizard woman' (vie moko) and her younger sister the 'booby woman' (vie kena) were considered the originators of tattooing (ME: 367-368). The 'white booby woman' (vie kena tea), together with other deities, protected the eggs of sea birds (RM:260). She might even be considered to be the female counterpart of the supreme god Makemake. In modern Hangaroa, vie kena tea is a term of endearment for a beloved wife whose well-rounded body and light skin is being praised ...

Jaussen (according to Barthel):

... A une certaine saison, on amassait des vivres, on faisait fête On emmaillotait un corail, pierre de défunt lezard, on l'enterrait, tanu. Cette cérémonie était un point de départ pour beacoup d'affaires, notamment de vacances pour le chant des tablettes ou de la priére, tanu i te tau moko o tana pure, enterrer la pierre sépulcrale de lézard de sa prière ..

We have seen how for example the Aztecs ordered the lizard close to the snake and death in their 20-day week:

In Heyerdahl 6 I found him comparing a strange unique statue from Marquesas (Hivaoa Island), where the figure was not standing up but lying down, with another strange figure (similarly lying down) from Colombia (San Augustin):

(Hiavaoa statue above, San Augustin below.)

The broad grin at the front is quite similar, not only between these two lying down statues (if that word can be used for non-standing figures), but also when comparing with the sun-fish and the moko figures, I think.

"... We find no analogy on any of the other islands [this was presumably written before the 'sun-fish' of stone was discovered on Easter Island], and we would have been led to assume that this was an unorthodox and original creation of the otherwise conservative Marquesan artist, had it not been for the fact that a completely analogous monolith has been discovered at San Augustin, the gateway to Andean cultures.

The close affinities between the general type of monolithic statues left in these two areas have already been mentioned. With the added convergence of the two exceptional prone figures the likelihood of an underlying relationship seems quite insistent; the similarity is too peculiar to be the work of independent thought ...

... both are strangely stretched, horizontally on their abdomens, in a strained pose. The very short, bulky arms are bent forwards, one on each side of the face which is so large that the hands do not project in front of it. In both cases the body is extremely broad, stocky, and short, with very stunted legs bent at the knees with the feet turned backwards. The round head is huge, bent back without a neck and looking forward and slightly upwards.

The eyes in both cases are large, the nose very broad and very flat, and the mouth is simply enormous, carved on both as a long and narrow oval spanning the entire lower portion of the face from one side to the other, leaving space neither for cheeks nor chin.

In the San Augustin mouth I can count to 20 teeth, two lines with 10 each. The Hivaoa mouth may also have 20 teeth, but I cannot count these because of the poor photograhps. Neither can I count the teeth of the 'sun-fish' from Easter Island, but they seem to be plenty more, perhaps 32.

The figures have no dress or ornament other than a strange object on top of the heads; it is carved as a flat, wide crest, slightly raised, curving across the crown with almost identical size on both figures. The only difference is that in the Marquesas it is placed sideways over the crown instead of lengthwise as on the San Augustine specimen ..." (Heyerdahl 6)

I guess both these lying down 'statues' represent the sun and that the idea is the same as that behind the Easter Island 'sun-fish'; Heyerdahl 6 (referring to the Hivaoa statue): '... it stretches its five-feet length in a prone position, almost as if swimming ...'

"... On the dirt being removed from the base of the pedestal [at Hivaoa] four figures carved in relief round its base were exposed. The one at the front and the one back were greatly stylized human figures each enclosing a distinct cross.

The other two, sculptured one on each side, weree animals with long body and raised neck, a stubby muzzle, rounded ears, a raised tail and stunted, deformed legs ...

... My first impression was that these two animal figures ... depicted some sort of dog, but a dog quite distinct from what little is known about the extinct Polynesian kuri, for it had a strangely erect and bare tail, rounded ears, and a long even body.

Only when later confronted with illustrations of the two four-legged, long-bodied, round-eared, and slim-tailed animals carved in relief in a corresponding manner on the base of the bearded Tiahuanaco monolith, did I begin to wonder whether the two animals similarly reproduced on the Puamau [Hivaoa] statue could have been based on a former symbolism rather than on an unidentifiable type of dog used as actual model.

The animals on the Tiahuanaco monolith represents the locally important feline symbol, the puma ..." (Heyerdahl 6)

To try to find out whether the gigantic head-gear of the old sun-god really had 5 crosses (with a ring in the middle) or not, I tried Wikipedia:

 

There seems to be only 4 'sun-crosses' in the 'barbecue' head-gear of Huehueteotl. Though the interpretation as crosses may be wrong: Between the upper and lower rims there are 4 * 2 = 8 straight vertical 'staffs' and between two such sets of vertical 'staffs' we have 'crooked' staffs with a sun symbol in the middle.

The 'crooked' staffs are constructed from 5 segments each one of them, i.e. there are 4 * 10 = 40 such segments in the censer. 40 + 8 = 48 segments (henua) in all, 24 + 8 = 32 of which 'stand up', while 4 * 4 = 16 'lie down'. 

A mask of the 'turquoise lord' (Xiuhtecuhtli) according to Wikipedia:

His wife (Chalchiuhtlicue) is described (in Wikipedia) like this:

"... In Aztec mythology, Chalchiuhtlicue (also Chalciuhtlicue, or Chalcihuitlicue) ('She of the Jade Skirt') was the goddess of lakes and streams. She is also a patroness of birth and plays a part in Aztec baptisms. In the myth of the five suns, she had dominion over the fourth world, which was destroyed in a great flood. She also presides over the day 5 Serpent and the trecena [a 13-day period] of 1 Reed.

Her husband was Tlaloc and with him, she was the mother of Tecciztecatl and ruler over Tlalocan. In her aquatic aspect, she was known as Acuecucyoticihuati, goddess of oceans, rivers and any other running water, as well as the patron of women in labor. She was also said to be the wife of Xiuhtecuhtli. She is sometimes associated with a rain goddess, Matlalcueitl.

In art, Chalciuhtlicue was illustrated wearing a green skirt and with short black vertical lines on the lower part of her face. In some scenes babies may be seen in a stream of water issuing from her skirts. Sometimes she is symbolized by a river with a heavily laden prickly pear tree growing on one bank ..."

We notice 'prickly', reminiscent of the Bororo piqui fruits.

I count 13 'flames' issuing from her long flowing 'skirt', and 16 sun symbols. 13 + 16 = 29.

Moving from top left and counterclockwise sun symbols and 'flames' (maybe droplets?) alternate in a regular pattern (with sun symbol arriving before 'flame'). After the 7th sun symbol, however, another sun symbol (the 8th) arrives.

Equally: after the 13th 'flame' the 15th sun symbol is followed by another (the 16th) sun symbol.

Maybe this structure depicts two half-years. Moving from top right (the Aztec live north of the equator) we have two sun symbols following each other, that could mean new year at winter solstice. The 1st sun symbol will belong to the old year. The 1st half year may then contain 15 periods (8 sun symbols and 7 'flames'), and the 2nd half year 13 periods (7 sun symbols and 6 'flames').