TRANSLATIONS

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Earlier I had guessed that the en face head was meaning noon / midsummer, because it seemed natural to assume that if sun was looking at right when he moved forward (during a.m. / spring), then he must start to turn his head before moving down as if in a mirror.

The evidence now has told us that my guess was wrong. Instead the en face head should probably be understood to mean (at least sometimes) 'face' (mata).

Mata

1. Tribe, people; te mata tûai-era-á, the ancient tribes. 2. Eye; mata ite, eyewitness. 3. Mesh: mata kupega. 4. Raw, uncooked, unripe, green, matamata, half-cooked, half-ripe. Vanaga.

1. The eye; mata neranera, mata kevakeva, mata mamae, to be drowsy; mata keva, mataraparapa, matapo, blind; mata hakahira, squint eyed; mata pagaha, eye strain. 2. Face, expression, aspect, figure, mien, presence, visage, view; mata mine, mata hakataha, mata pupura, mata hakahiro, to consider. 3. Raw, green, unripe. 4. Drop of water. 5. Mesh; hakamata, to make a net. 6. Cutting, flint. 7. Point, spear, spike (a fish bone). 8. Chancre. Churchill.

There is a wide range of significations in this stem. It will serve to express an opening as small as the mesh of a net or as large as a door of a house; it will serve to designate globular objects as large as the eye or as small as the bud on a twig or the drop of rain, and designating a pointed object it answers with equal facility for the sharpened tip of a lance or the acres of a headland; it describes as well the edge of a paddle or the source from which a thing originates. Churchill 2.

The 'en face' sign may have been used in the rongorongo texts to express 'autumn equinox' (not 'summer solstice').

If the rongorongo texts were created by a people who talked Polynesian, then the 'en face' sign perhaps could be read as 'mata' (face). However, mata does not necessarily implies matahiti (new year):

'... The word ta'u means 'year' in Old Rapanui (Modern Rapanui uses Tahitian matahiti) ...'

We should though follow Makemson and think of matahiti as the rise of the Pleiades:

'The Polynesian word for new year, matahiti or makahiki, may be a contraction from Matariki-whiti (or Makalii-hiki, according to the dialect used) - in other words, the 'Pleiades rise' ...'

Hiti

1. To show itself again, to reappear (of the new moon, of a constellation - meaning uncertain). 2. Said of thin, tough-fleshed fish of indifferent taste: ika hiti. 3. Said of fish when they come to the stones of the shore for insects among the seaweed: he hiti te ika. 4. To reproach someone for his ingratitude. Vanaga.

1. To rise, to appear, to dawn; hitihaga, rising; hitihaga roa, sunrise; hitihiti, to dawn; horau hitihiti, break of day; hakahiti ki te eeve, to show the buttocks. 2. Puffed; gutu hiti, thick lips. Churchill.

Once the Pleiades rose in the evening at autumn equinox in the northern hemisphere, but on Easter Island the observations probably were done just before dawn and then the Pleiades were found later in autumn as a sign of the new year:

'... The Orongo rituals are thought to have begun in the AD 1400-1500s, and the use of Orongo as a ritual site intensified some fifty years later. If we take AD 1500 as a baseline, we find that the sun's declination was 23°26', while the declination of the Pleiades was 22°37'. This means that the Pleiades led the sun into the sky by about two hours, and that the two risings were over the same geographical feature a mere 0°49' apart. 

The ethnographies do not mention Orongo as a site from which the skies were watched. Let us presume however, on the basis of the site's special qualities and uses, that the old men may have watched the skies from Orongo. In the year AD 1500, they would have seen the Pleiades at 18° above the horizon at the end of astronomical twilight on hua, the twelfth night of the moon in the Rapa Nui month of Te Maro (The Loincloth). The Rapanui word hua means 'the same, to continue' and 'to bloom, to sprout, to flower', with a germ sense of both plants and human progeny growing and thriving ...'

The en face 'person' (GD15) appears e.g. in the 13th period of the (presumed) yearly calendar of Keiti:

Eb4-13 Eb4-14 Eb4-15
Eb4-16 Eb4-17 Eb4-18 Eb4-19
Eb4-20 Eb4-21

In the 12th period we can see honu (probably a sign of solstice):
Eb4-7 Eb4-8 Eb4-9 Eb4-10 Eb4-11 Eb4-12

The 12th glyph of line Eb4 has a gap between feet and henua, which I read as 'one period is ending and another to begin, with an short interval in between them'. In Eb4-13 and Eb4-16 we count to 2 * (2*6) = 24 marks, possibly indicating 24 half-months. All of them are 'dead' now it seems.

Eb4-8 seems to be the period of solstice ('the perch'), because the glyph is flanked by honu glyphs, while Eb4-11 may mean the new year.

In Eb4-14 we see the sign of autumn, the head of the sun is beginning to lean down, soon to fall. Earlier I have read this type of glyph as autumn equinox and I have no good reason to change my opinion. In Eb4-17 we can imagine a period (henua) flying away, followed by another (possibly) indicator of autumn equinox (or rather the appearance of the Pleiades at dawn). But these glyphs arrive after the presumed winter solstice description in Ab4-7--12, and the interpretation is for now uncertain.

In Eb4-10 we recognize the end of the old and the beginning of new year, i.e. GD53 with its vertical straight demarcation line.

We saw GD53 in a similar location earlier, in H/P/Q where it probably is parallel to the Anakena glyph (Aa1-1):

H
P
Q
H
P
Q
A -

In Ha5-27 (marked red) we can see a headless throat with two downward sloping hatchmarks, which in a way resembles Aa1-11:

But in Aa1-11 the hatchmarks suggest a movement upwards, perhaps in order to indicate that the 'soul' of the sun is moving to the 'land of the dead' as in GD73, where the bones of the hand are left behind:

The sun head reappears four glyphs later at the top of GD41 (hau tea) and the same type of picture is also used in the parallel Qa5-14:

  

Maybe this type of picture is used to indicate that the source of light is the sun? Sun as the source of the new year (new light) seems in Aa1-1 also to be located at the top, here as the 'head' (i.e. front):

In Pa5-1 the parallel pictures exhibited are different, with 5 sloping hatchmarks:

Number 5 is also seen in H and Q, though here more clearly in the pattern 2 + 3:

Ha5-20 Ha5-21 Pa5-1 Pa5-2 Qa5-10 Qa5-11
2 3 2 + 3 = 5 - 2 3