TRANSLATIONS

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Having thus secured the connection between autumn equinox and hua poporo, and once again arrived at 180 (10) + 182 (13) + 3 = 365, this time by way of Mamari, the winding trail goes on to Ure Honu and the skull of king Hotu Matua:

In Manuscript E (according to Barthel 2) there are clues. Ure Honu had a banana plantation and when he weeded it a rat appeared which lead him to the skull of King Hotu Matua. The rat was the kuhane of the old solar king Hotu Matua.

Ure means lineage and honu means turtle. Ure Honu is the name of the successor to the 'honu' (sun king). Ure Honu, we can understand, is the new king, because he found the yellow skull in his plantation. He had received it by the aid of the kuhane (the black rat), he had the good 'will' of the old king:

"... The king, wearing now a short, stiff archaic mantle, walks in a grave and stately manner to the sanctuary of the wolf-god Upwaut, the 'Opener of the Way', where he anoints the sacred standard and, preceded by this, marches to the palace chapel, into which he disappears. A period of time elapses during which the pharaoh is no longer manifest.

When he reappears he is clothed as in the Narmer palette, wearing the kilt with Hathor belt and bull's tail attatched. In his right hand he holds the flail scepter and in his left, instead of the usual crook of the Good Shepherd, an object resembling a small scroll, called the Will, the House Document, or Secret of the Two Partners, which he exhibits in triumph, proclaiming to all in attendance that it was given him by his dead father Osiris, in the presence of the earth-god Geb.

'I have run', he cries, 'holding the Secret of the Two Partners, the Will that my father has given me before Geb. I have passed through the land and touched the four sides of it. I traverse it as I desire.' ... " (Campbell 2)

We can identify the black rat with Upwaut, the wolf-god, the 'Opener of the Way'. There were no wolves on Easter Island.

The story about Ure Honu was introduced, in the glyph dictionary, just a few pages earlier:

"... Another year passed, and a man by the name of Ure Honu went to work in his banana plantation. He went and came to the last part, to the 'head' (i.e., the upper part of the banana plantation), to the end of the banana plantation. The sun was standing just right for Ure Honu to clean out the weeds from the banana plantation.

On the first day he hoed the weeds. That went on all day, and then evening came. Suddenly a rat came from the middle of the banana plantation. Ure Honu saw it and ran after it. But it disappeared and he could not catch it. On the second day of hoeing, the same thing happened with the rat. It ran away, and he could not catch it. On the third day, he reached the 'head' of the bananas and finished the work in the plantation. Again the rat ran away, and Ure Honu followed it.

It ran and slipped into the hole of a stone. He poked after it, lifted up the stone, and saw that the skull was (in the hole) of the stone. (The rat was) a spirit of the skull (he kuhane o te puoko). Ure Honu was amazed and said, 'How beautiful you are! In the head of the new bananas is a skull, painted with yellow root and with a strip of barkcloth around it.' Ure Honu stayed for a while, (then) he went away and covered the roof of his house in Vai Matā. It was a new house. He took the very large skull, which he had found at the head of the banana plantation, and hung it up in the new house. He tied it up in the framework of the roof (hahanga) and left it hanging there ..." (Manuscript E according to Barthel 2)

In ancient Egypt the new year was located at the time when the waters in the Nile suddenly came down from Upper Egypt, and it has been described earlier (at niu) in the glyph dictionary:

"... Instead of that old, dark, terrible drama of the king's death, which had formerly been played to the hilt, the audience now watched a solemn symbolic mime, the Sed festival, in which the king renewed his pharaonic warrant without submitting to the personal inconvenience of a literal death.

The rite was celebrated, some authorities believe, according to a cycle of thirty years, regardless of the dating of the reigns; others have it, however, that the only scheduling factor was the king's own desire and command. Either way, the real hero of the great occasion was no longer the timeless Pharaoh (capital P), who puts on pharaohs, like clothes, and puts them off, but the living garment of flesh and bone, this particular pharaoh So-and-so, who, instead of giving himself to the part, now had found a way to keep the part to himself. And this he did simply by stepping the mythological image down one degree. Instead of Pharaoh changing pharaohs, it was the pharaoh who changed costumes.

The season of year for this royal ballet was the same as that proper to a coronation; the first five days of the first month of the 'Season of Coming Forth', when the hillocks and fields, following the inundation of the Nile, were again emerging from the waters. For the seasonal cycle, throughout the ancient world, was the foremost sign of rebirth following death, and in Egypt the chronometer of this cycle was the annual flooding of the Nile. Numerous festival edifices were constructed, incensed, and consecrated; a throne hall wherein the king should sit while approached in obeisance by the gods and their priesthoods (who in a crueler time would have been the registrars of his death); a large court for the presentation of mimes, processions, and other such visual events; and finally a palace-chapel into which the god-king would retire for his changes of costume.

Five days of illumination, called the 'Lighting of the Flame' (which in the earlier reading of this miracle play would have followed the quenching of the fires on the dark night of the moon when the king was ritually slain), preceded the five days of the festival itself; and then the solemn occasion (ad majorem dei gloriam) commenced. The opening rites were under the patronage of Hathor. The king, wearing the belt with her four faces and the tail of her mighty bull, moved in numerious processions, preceded by his four standards, from one temple to the next, presenting favors (not offerings) to the gods.

Whereafter the priesthoods arrived in homage before his throne, bearing the symbols of their gods. More processions followed, during which, the king moved about - as Professor Frankfort states in his account - 'like the shuttle in a great loom' to re-create the fabric of his domain, into which the cosmic powers represented by the gods, no less than the people of the land, were to be woven ..."

Then follows the picture above and the text about Pharaoh and Upwaut.

The Nile has been mentioned once more, in the beginning at manu rere:

2. At the top level - at the apex of the pyramid - the 'bird' must be a bird of prey and like a king.

In ancient Egypt there was also a special type of bird to indicate this, the benu bird (named phoenix by the Greeks). According to Wilkinson the benu bird was a heron (Ardea cinerea - cǐnis = ashes) and '... standing for itself on an isolated rock or on a little island in the middle of the water the heron was an appropriate image for how the first life appeared on the primary hill which arose from the watery chaos at the time of the original creation.'

'Similarly to the sun the heron rose up from the primary waters, and its Egyptian name, benu, was probably derived from the word weben, to 'rise' or 'shine'. This magnificent wader was also associated with the inundations of the Nile.'

But herons have straight beaks in order to be able to harpoon frogs and fishes. The picture above, also from Wilkinson, instead suggests a slightly bent beak.

'As a symbol for the sun the heron was the sacred bird of Heliopolis, which became the mythical phoenix of the Greeks. Without doubt through its association with the descending and rising sun the heron was comprehended as lord over the royal jubilee of rejuvenation, which was staged for a pharao who had reigned in thirty years.'

We now can identify the 'heron' with Raven (in Haida Gwaii):

Hereabouts was all saltwater, they say.
He was flying all around, the Raven was,
looking for land that he could stand on.
After a time, at the toe of the Islands, there was one rock awash.
He flew there to sit ...

The Raven is the trickster god and therefore equivalent with Maui (who was born in the 5th season at solstice). The trickster personality must be due to the disorderly (outside the regular calendar) time between the years (or rather: 'years').

In the famous sculpture The Spirit of Haida Gwaii it is Raven who sits at the stern and manœuvres:

The picture is from Wikipedia. The sculpture exists in two forms, a black and a green variant:

"The Spirit of Haida Gwaii is intended to represent the aboriginal heritage of the Haida Gwaii region in Canada's Queen Charlotte Islands. In green-coloured bronze on the Vancouver version and black-coloured on the Washington version, it shows a traditional Haida cedar dugout canoe which totals six metres in length.

The canoe carries the following passengers: the Raven, the traditional trickster of Haida mythology, holding the steering oar; the Mouse Woman, crouched under Raven's tail; the Grizzly Bear, sitting at the bow and staring toward Raven; the Bear mother, Grizzly's human wife; their cubs, Good Bear (ears pointed forward) and Bad Bear (ears pointed back); Beaver, Raven's uncle; Dogfish Woman; the Eagle; the Frog; the Wolf, claws imbedded in Beaver's back and teeth in Eagle's wing; a small human paddler in Haida garb known as the Ancient Reluctant Conscript; and, at the sculpture's focal point, the human Shaman (or Kilstlaai in Haida), who wears the Haida cloak and woven spruce root hat and holds a tall staff carved with the Seabear, Raven and Killer whale.

Consistent with Haida tradition, the significance of the passengers is highly symbolic. The variety and interdependence of the canoe's occupants represents the natural environment on which the ancient Haida relied for their very survival: the passengers are diverse, and not always in harmony, yet they must depend on one another to live. The fact that the cunning trickster, Raven, holds the steering oar is likely symbolic of nature's unpredictability ..." (Wikipedia)

The one at the stern who steers is, we have learnt, the weak one (and I think about politicians - all mouth and no action). The stronger ones move the canoe forward. 4 such paddlers would agree with the 4 arms raising the sky roof:

The Raven is black, a colour in harmony with the darkest time of the year. Yet, I remember:

... In Robert Graves' quest for understanding he arrives at identifying the lapwing with A:

Day of the Winter Solstice - A - aidhircleóg, lapwing; alad, piebald. Why is the Lapwing at the head of the vowels?

Not hard to answer. It is a reminder that the secrets of the Beth-Luis-Nion [the ABC of the pre-latin Ogham alphabet] must be hidden by deception and equivocation, as the lapwing hides her eggs. And Piebald is the colour of this mid-winter season when wise men keep to their chimney-corners, which are black with soot inside and outside white with snow; and of the Goddess of Life-in-Death and Death-in-Life, whose prophetic bird is the piebald magpie ...

The magpie is black and white (suggesting both halves of the year), though in the sunshine she has all the colours:

(Wikipedia)

I write 'she', because the piebald bird suggests Taraga rather than Maui. Pica pica, her latin name, 'points' at tara.

Tara

1. Thorn: tara miro. 2. Spur: tara moa. 3. Corner; te tara o te hare, corner of house; tara o te ahu, corner of ahu. Vanaga.

(1. Dollar; moni tara, id.) 2. Thorn, spike, horn; taratara, prickly, rough, full of rocks. 3. To announce, to proclaim, to promulgate, to call, to slander; tatara, to make a genealogy. Churchill

The mystery of colour (where does it come from?) certainly is a subject of myths.

"The Haida word ghuhlghahl corresponds well to the Chinese word qīng and the Navajo dootl'izh, but not only to any single word in English. It covers most of the range which English divides with narrower terms like blue, bluegreen, blueblack, purple and turquoise.

It is the colour of the sunlit, living world: including the blues and indigoes of the sky, the greens and blues of the sea, the summer colours of mountains, the breathing greens of needles, shoots and leaves, and the iridescent plumage of several species of birds.

It is also, like qīng and dootl'izh, the name of a range of mineral hues. It is clearly distinct from white (which is ghaada in Haida) and red (which is sghiit), but it impinges on yellow, brown and black. The Haida word for black, hlghahl, is also the word for color in general and appears to be the root from which ghuhlghahl is derived ..." (Sharp as a Knife)

In the Rapanui language ghuhlghahl corresponds to uri:

Uri

1. Dark; black-and-blue. 2. Green; ki oti te toga, he-uri te maúku o te kaiga, te kumara, te taro, te tahi hoki me'e, once winter is over, the grasses grow green, and the sweet potatoes, and the taro, and the other plants. Uriuri, black; very dark. Vanaga.

Uriuri, black, brown, gray, dark, green, blue, violet (hurihuri). Hakahurihuri, dark, obscurity, to darken. P Pau.: uriuri, black. Mgv.: uriuri, black, very dark, color of the deep sea, any vivid color. Mq.: uiui, black, brown. Ta.: uri, black. Churchill.

Tangaroa uri is the 1st month of summer.

The most detailed lesson in the language of Haida Gwaii which Robert Bringhurst delivers (in Sharp as a Knife) is based on the colour of Raven. He must have considered it important:

Gyaan han lla lla suudas, llagi lla xhastliyaay dluu, Then · thus · him · he · talking-action · him-to · he · grasping-handling-the · when, As he handed them these, he said to him,
"Dii haw dang iiji. "Me · here · you · are. "You are me.
Waa ising dang iiji." That · there · too · you · are." You are that, too."
     
Taj xwaaghiit laalghaay gutgha kunxhaawsi un-guut Rear-of-house · toward-being · screens-the · together · corner-forming-did · top-along On top of the screens forming a point in the rear of the house,
giina ghuhlghahl stlabdala ganhlghahldaayasi creature · blue · slim-being-many · jointly-moving-acting-did sleek blue beings were preening themselves.
lla suudaasi. he · talking-acting-did. Those are the things of which he was speaking.

"Not until much later in the poem ... will we learn that these sleek blue (and by inference blackish) beings are definitely ravens. But why call ravens slender and bluegreen when they appear to many people as well-fed, muscular and iridescent black? This question has good answers in the world of natural history, and equally good answers in the world of myth. Skaay has both feet in both worlds, not one foot in each.

It is worth remembering first of all that blackness and iridescence are precisely the qualitites of the two objects being given to the Raven - and the sleek blue beings enter the narrative when Voicehandler is actually in the process of handing him these things. Skaay overlays the images. Iridescence and blackness - two qualities embodied in the raven - are qualities the Raven is about to embody in the world. Slimness and bluegreenness, as it happens, are basic properties of the Haida world too ...

In the early months of life, the feathers of ravens, Corvus corax, are dull and brownish black. At first molt, four to six months after they are born, they acquire the new plumage that looks iridescent black to casual orbservers but proves on close inspection to be rich gunmetal blue. A raven that is slim and blue is a yearling ..." (Sharp as a Knife)