next page

previous page

up

home

What star was it that coincided with the royal residence (at Anakena)?

'... when the exploreres arrived at the royal residence and when they left it, the moon stood close to the same star, once in the evening and once in the morning. The arrival of Hotu Matua is also determined by a 'fixed sidereal point': the island king arrives on October 15, fifty-five days after the departure of the explorers from Anakena, which means two sidereal months (fifty-four days and fifteen hours) later.

Again the moon is associated with the same star, this time in the last quarter of the moon. The connection with the stellar positions of the moon, however, is valid only for the royal residence ...'

I believe that ana in Anakena means both cave and star, therefore the star should be named Ana-Kena.

The reason why the concept of 'cave' and 'star' are so close together as to have the same name (ana) is made clear from what Makemson says:

"... Since he came of chiefly lineage, Hawaii-loa had received an excellent education. In the astronomical school he had studied the northern and southern motions of the Sun. He knew how to tell the months by the stars and the days by the changing phases of the Moon. He could recite the names of the stars which rose from the same rua or pit on the horizon..."

A cave (ana) is like a pit (rua). The star (ana) gave its name to the cave (ana). And Robert Graves is able to trace the word back to its beginnings in far ancient times:

"Mr. E. M. Parr writes to me that An is Sumerian for 'Heaven' and that in his view the Goddess Athene was another Anna, namely Ath-enna, an inversion of Anatha, alias Neith of Libya; also that Ma is a shortening of the Sumerian Ama, 'mother', and that Ma-ri means 'the fruitful mother' from rim 'to bear a child'.

Mari was the name of the goddess on whose account the Egyptians of 1000 B.C. called Cyprus 'Ay-mari', and who ruled at Mari on the Euphrates (a city sacked by Hammurabi in 1800 B.C.) and at Amari in Minoan Crete.

I cannot but note that the name of the South American Aymara indians is quite similar to Ay-mari:

"Vestiges of a primitive script survived into early historic times in the Andean area around lake Titicaca. The first thorough study of this script was presented by Ibarra Grasso (1948), although several writers had previously commented on this curious picture-writing, and illustrated samples.

Ibarra Grasso (Ibid., pp. 99-124) presents a rich material on this writing found both among post-Columbian Aymara and Quechua tribes, and in demonstrating the extra-European origin he draws a parallel with the Cuna writing system (Ibid., p. 117), and gives an example of this Andean script in boustrophedon.

A stone tablet from the Andes with ideograms placed in two lines shows that the second line did not merely continue in boustrophedon fashion from the first, but it was in addition placed upside down as on the Easter Island tablets. Contrary to the Cuna writing system, but precisely as on Easter Island, this Andean inscription started in the left end of the lower line.

The fact that this writing system is not readily thought of was demonstrated at a round-table conference in connection with the VII International Anthropologist Congress in Moscow in 1964, when Knorozov (1964 b, p. 4) pointed out that the system of reversed boustrophedon had been discovered only in two localities throughout the world: Easter Island and Peru." (Heyerdahl 4)

So Ma-ri-anna is 'the fruitful mother of Heaven', alias Miriam, Marian or Mariandyne, the 'leaping Myrrhine' of Troy, and Mariamne: a word of triple power. But the basic word is Anna, which confers divinity on mere parturition and which also seems to form part of Arianrhod's name.

Arianrhod in fact may not be a debasement of Argentum and rota 'silver, wheel' but Ar-ri-an, 'High fruitful mother' who turns the wheel of heaven; if so, Arianrhod's Cretan counterpart Ariadne would be Ar-ri-an-de, the de meaning barley, as in Demeter.

The simple form Ana, or Anah, occurs as a Horite clan name in Genesis, XXXVI; though masculinized in two out of the three mentions of her, she is principally celebrated as the mother of Aholibarnah ('tabernacle of the high place'), the heiress whom Esau married on his arrival in the Seir pastures. (Ana's alleged discovery of mules in the wilderness is due to a scribal error.)

James Joyce playfully celebrates Anna's universality in his Anna Livia Plurabelle. And indeed if one needs a single, inclusive name for the Great Goddess, Anna is the best choice. To Chrisian mystics she is 'God's Grandmother'." (The White Goddess)

To repeat what kena means:

"The Masked Booby, Sula dactylatra, is a large seabird of the gannet family, Sulidae. This species breeds on islands in tropical oceans, except in the eastern Atlantic; in the eastern Pacific it is replaced by the Nazca Booby, Sula granti, which was formerly regarded as a subspecies of Masked Booby (Pitman & Jehl 1998, Friesen et al. 2002). This is the largest booby, at 81-91 cm length, 152 cm wingspan and 1500 g weight. Adults are white with pointed black wings, a pointed black tail, and a dark grey facemask. The sexes are similar, but the male has a yellow bill, and the female's is greenish yellow; during the breeding season they have a patch of bare, bluish skin at the base of the bill. Juveniles are brownish on the head and upperparts, with a whitish rump and neck collar. The underparts are white. Adult plumage is acquired over two years.

The Masked Booby is silent at sea, but has a reedy whistling greeting call at the nesting colonies. While on the breeding grounds, these birds display a wide range of hissing and quacking notes. It nests in small colonies, laying two chalky white eggs on sandy beaches in shallow depressions, which are incubated by both adults for 45 days. Normally only one chick fledges. Masked Boobies are spectacular divers, plunging diagonally into the ocean at high speed. They mainly eat small fish, including flying fish. This is a is fairly sedentary bird, wintering at sea, but rarely seen far away from the breeding colonies ..." (Internet - Wikipedia)

If we take the Tahitian 10 star pillars and examine which of them could be Ana-Kena, the choice is obvious - Antares (the entrance star, Ana-mua):

Easter Island is located 27º south of the equator.

"In general the Polynesian method of navigation consisted in laying a course direct to a given destination by keeping the bow of the vessel pointed toward a star near the horizon whose bearing corresponded with the direction of the destination. During the daytime the course had to be figured from the changing position of the Sun.

While this method proved satisfactory for distances involving only a few days of sailing on a direct wind, it could not have been relied on entirely during voyages of several weeks' duration when the wind was often contrary and a lateral drift of the vessel was unavoidable. The method was, of course, useless during periods of storms and cloudy skies when the ship was bound to be driven from the direct course.

In addition to those navigating stars whose positions near the horizon gave the desired great circle course, another class of stars was used for determining when the vessel had arrived in the latitude of its destination. Kepelino, a gifted Hawaiian scholar, characterized navigating stars as 'those which are suspended in turn over each land, as Hoku-lei ['Star-wreath', Capella or the whole constellation of Auriga] over Hawaii'.

"... Hoku-lei was chosen by Pualoa, the 'people promoter', and Kawelolani the astrologer from the stars remaining after the people's stars and those of the steersmen had all been enumerated.

Hoku-lei was one of the wives of Makalii (Pleidades), the other being Hoku-ula, Aldebaran." (Makemson)

The Polynesians had thus discovered that any star which passes through the zenith of a certain island also traverses the zeniths of all other points in the same latitude; likewise that all other stars of the same declination and diurnal motion as the given star - or, in other words, which rise from the same pit on the horizon - must also pass through the zenith of the same island.

Thus the mariner traveling north or south on the earth knew when he had arrived at the latitude of his destination by noting when a particular star passed overhead during the night. Having carefully studied the directions of winds and waves during the voyage, he knew whether he had arrived at a point east or west of his objective and could steer his course accordingly along a parallel of latitude, providing the wind was not against him.

The association of the star Aldebaran with Hawaii thus becomes clear. Situated 16º north of the equator Aldebaran passes 3º or 4º south of the zenith of Hawaii and can therefore be used for determining the latitude when a correction is applied for the slight difference. A thousand years ago Aldebaran was situated 2º farther south than at present." (Makemson)

I guess we may correlate like this: