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There are 3 glyphs only in the X-area of Tahua, a fact that has been a hindrance for my acceptance of the idea that the X-area describes winter solstice time - I had expected to find 5 (= 365 - 360) glyphs, not 3 glyphs.

But slowly I have been convinced, not only by the Sycomore Lady (Nut, Isis and Hathor), but by lots of other circumstantial evidence.

To convince also my reader I do not think an ordered presentation of this evidence is a useful method, it would take too many pages and necessitate exhibition of a global picture. The answer to one question, would raise just more questions. Instead I will paint a local picture and wait for the global evidence to slowly accumulate by itself in the right places:

360 was an ordered number of days for the solar year and being ordered it must also have been commanded, and having been commanded there must have been somebody who commanded, the ruler.

Mother Nature insisted on another year, and the solution to this dilemma was the intercalated 5 days between the ordered yearly cycles. In opposition to the ordered calendar of the ruler those 5 days must be disordered.

"The Latin Cronos was called Saturn and in his statues he was armed with a pruning-knife crooked like a crow's bill: probably a rebus on his name.

For though the later Greeks liked to think that the name meant chronos, 'time' because any very old man was humorously called 'Cronos', the more likely derivation is from the same root cron or corn that gives the Greek and Latin words for crow - corone and cornix.

The crow was a bird much consulted by augurs and symbolic, in Italy as in Greece, of long life. Thus it is possible that another name for Cronos, the sleeping Titan, guarded by the hundred-headed Briareus, was Bran, the Crow-god.

The Cronos myth, at any rate, is ambivalent: it records the supersession and ritual murder, in both oak and barley cults, of the Sacred King at the close of his term of office; and it records the conquest by the Achaean herdsmen of the pre-Achaean husbandmen of Greece.

At the Roman Saturnalia in Republican times, a festival corresponding with the old English Yule, all social restraints were temporally abandoned in memory of the golded reign of Cronos.

I call Bran a Crow-god, but crow, raven, scald-crow and other large black carrion birds are not always differentiated in early times. Corone in Greek also included the corax, or raven, and the Latin corvus, raven, comes from the same root as cornix, crow. The crows of Bran, Cronos, Saturn, Aesculapius and Apollo are, equally, ravens." (The White Goddess)

As the commander in chief was male (e.g. the Pharaoh) the time between the reigns must - by the fundamental logic of opposites - be female. And as the ruler was enlightened (how else could he command?) he must be equivalent to the sun - from which must be concluded that the moon was female.

From a solar point of view the disordered time had a duration of 5 days. From a lunar point of view another calculation must be used. But 12 * 29½ = 354 and 13 * 29½ = 383½, neither result possible to understand by an ordered mind.

Instead, the fundamental (solar) fact that there was room for 12 months only in a year could be transformed into a measure of 6 double-months, an ordered (and therefore beautiful) transformation possible to visualize as a hexagon, a good rational picture of the circle (with π as 3).

But influence from the moon then forced these 6 double-months to be reorganized into 3 tertials, because the phases of the moon were 3.

"English social life was based on agriculture, grazing, and hunting, not on history, and the Theme was still everywhere implicit in the popular celebration of the festivals now known as Candlemas, Lady Day, May Day, Midsummer Day, Lammas, Michaelmas, All-Hallowe'en, and Christmas; it was also secretly preserved as religious doctrine in the covens of the anti-Christian witch-cult. Thus the English, though with no traditional respect for the poet, have a traditional awareness of the Theme.

The Theme, briefly, is the antique story, which falls into thirteen chapters and an epilogue, of the birth, life, death and resurrection of the God of the Waxing Year; the central chapters concern the God's losing battle with the God of the Waning Year for love of the capricious and all-powerful Threefold Goddess, their mother, bride and layer-out." (The White Goddess)

Understanding all this makes it very understandable that there are only 3 glyphs for X-time in Tahua. We even may begin to understand why

is number 15 of the glyphs (counting from the beginning of the text). When sun is at its darkest, moon must have collected all light and be at its brightest - i.e. full moon (Omotohi):

1 Ohiro 2 Oata 3 Kokore tahi 4 Kokore rua 5 Kokore toru
6 Kokore ha 7 Kokore rima 8 Kokore ono 9 Maharu 10 Ohua
11 Otua 12 Maúre 13 Ina-ira 14 Rakau 15 Omotohi

The right part of Aa1-15 signifies 'birth' (of the new sun) and the 15th night in the Mamari moon calendar signifies 'death' (of the waxing moon).

The Feathered Serpent shows itself at Otua, and his 'spine feathers' are 15 in number to mark the point of his death (visualized by cut off toes?). We should explain Otua as 'o tu'a, the back (part of the cycle). But Churchill has also this explanation to offer:

'Sea urchin, echinus. The word must have a germ sense indicating something spinous which will be satisfactorily descriptive of the sea urchin all spines, the prawn with antennae and thin long legs, and in the Maori the shell of Mesodesma spissa. Tuaapapa, haunch, hip, spine. Tuahaigoigo, tattooing on the back. Tuahuri, abortion; poki tuahuri, abortive child. Tuaivi, spine, vertebræ, back, loins; mate mai te tuaivi, ill at ease. Tuakana, elder, elder brother; tuakana tamaahina, elder sister. Tuamouga, mountain summit.'

The right part of Aa1-15 is Barthel's number 260 and he says:

"Im Schneidersitz gekreuzte Beine charakterisieren die Zeichengruppe 260/360 [= 260 but with head in profile, and with arm and wing mirrored]. Formen mit Enface-Kopf und solche mit Profilkopf sind untereinander austauschbar; ferner lassen sich beide durch das Zeichen 431 ersetzen.

Barthel gives two examples of 431, the first of which we recognize as Pb5-13:

Nun stellt das Zeichen 431 offenbar ein schwanztragendes Tier dar, fûr das in voreuropäischer Zeit auf der Osterinsel nur die 'Ratte' (kio'e) in Betracht kommt. Die Bezeichnung 'Ratte' galt auf dem benachbarten Mangareva als Schimpfwort für die 'kio', jene Angehörigen der niedrigsten sozialen Stufe, die das Land der Vornehmen bearbeiten mußten. Die gleiche Einrichtung bestand auch auf der Osterinsel, wo 'kio' als Sklaven ihren Herren auf den Feldern Dienste leisteten.

Falls die nachweisbare Austauschbarkeit zwischen dem Zeichen 431 (kio'e) und den Zeichen 260/360 auf der lautmäßigen Ähnlichkeit und begrifflichen Verwandschaft mit 'kio' beruht, hätte man diese Gestalten als Sklaven, Besiegte oder Dienende aufzufassen. Vielleicht waren die untergeschlagenen Beine eine Positur der Unterwürfigkeit?"

Immediately after Pb5-13 we find niu:

marking 'female' revolution, a time when the ruler is discharged and all are free, even the slaves.

"In Upper Egypt, wrote Sir James G. Frazer in The Golden Bough, citing the observations of a German nineteenth-century voyager, on the first day of the solar year by Coptic reckoning, that is, on the tenth of September, when the Nile has generally reached its highest point, the regular government is suspended for three days and every town chooses its own ruler.

This temporary lord wears a sort of tall fool's cap and a long flaxen beard, and is enveloped in a strange mantle. With a wand of office in his hand and attended by men disguised as scribes, executioners, and so forth, he proceeds to the Governor's house. The latter allows himself to be deposed; and the mock king, mounting the throne, holds a tribunal, to the decisions of which even the governor and his officials must bow.

After three days the mock king is condemned to death; the envelope or shell in which he was encased is committed to the flames, and from its ashes the Fellah creeps forth. The custom points to an old practice of burning a real king in grim earnest." (Campbell 2)