There are seven such glyphs in Tahua:

Aa1-13	Aa1-75	Aa5-40	Aa6-61	Ab4-16	Ab4-17	Ab8-45

I think that we will have to investigate all these examples in order to - hopefully - arrive at a reasonable explanation of Aa1-13. We have no longer a known structure (like the diurnal cycle of the sun) to rely on, we have moved into the unknown, the X glyph area.

At once we can make an important observation: Aa1-13 and Aa1-75 are evidently written alike and we should - presumably - understand this to indicate that they mean the same thing.

Aa5-40 may also belong to this little group, judging from its 'crown' (upper part) and 'pouch' (lower part). But the 'pouch' is more lean and that ought to be a sign to distinguish Aa5-40 from Aa1-13 and Aa1-75.

Aa1-75 appears close to the end of what is a long text parallel with H/P/Q:

Aa1-72	Aa1-73	Aa1-74	Aa1-75	Aa1-76
ki tona pure	tagata kua moe	e tagata kua mau i tona matagi	e vaero rua	ku totoro

This long parallel text starts with Aa1-1 and seems to be ending with Aa1-76. Counting from the beginning (Aa1-1) until the beginning of the X-glyphs we have 12 glyphs, adding the X-glyps (3) and the glyphs for the day (21) we reach the sum 36 - presumably signifying the yearly cycle of the sun.

After subtracting these 36 glyphs from 76 we have 40 remaining glyphs, twice the number of fingers and toes, and also 1/9 of 360.

The night time glyphs are (significantly) 12 in number (= ½ 24 and also = the number of solar months in a year). These numbers point to the sun, although the night mainly 'belongs' to the moon.

Subtracting the night time glyphs from 40 leaves us with 28 remaining glyphs and that number probably refer to those 28 nights in a month when the sun makes the moon visible.

As an experiment we can arrange the 28 glyphs beyond the day calendar into a pattern with 4 * 7 glyphs:

No obvious pattern - which would have confirmed intentions by the creator of the text to make us see this 4 * 7 matrix - is immediately perceived.

Two reflections, though:

1) The next but last column (with niu at bottom) possibly has its glyphs pairwise connected (and if so they affirm a pattern based on number 7), because both the top type of glyph and niu appear in the short X-string of glyphs:

and the two remaining glyphs in the column share the quality of 'fish' appearance (Metoro: mago respectively ika).

2) The vertical straight line in the central glyph of the 3rd line may be a sign announcing 'middle'.

My interpretation of a vertical straight line as 'middle' is (mainly) based on Ha6-3:

and in this glyph we can see that the central line not is located in the middle of the glyph but closer to the right border line - a feature which it shares with Aa1-64:

If Aa1-64 means 'middle', we possibly should change the matrix into this one:

Significantly the first glyph in this new arrangment is Aa-53, i.e. the glyph which comes after counting 52 glyphs from the beginning of the text, and that may indicate that those 52 glyphs form a separate part.

At the end of the 52 glyphs we have:

Aa1-49	Aa1-50	Aa1-51	Aa1-52

48 = 6 * 8 and then follows - as I 'read' it - the 'death' (GD45, ihe tau) of the 3 'wives' of the sun + the 'sign of the king' (GD13, rei miro). Remarkably, all four glyphs show a very subdued 'face', shrunken and not at all at their best.

Probably the first glyph in the new matrix (GD53, maitaki) announces new year. The model with 26 glyphs suggests that niu is close to the end of the year. But 26 is geared to 14 and the moon (by the fact that 26 * 14 = 364), and therefore a better guess would probably be 24 (= sun + a wife all through 12 months).

24 will also agree better with the glyph

because there we have 5 (as in the five extracalendrical nights between two regular years), and counting from this glyph we will have niu at the next but last position:

We have by this experiment arrived at a (tentative) solution suggesting that the niu type of glyph is associated with the end of a year.

But we cannot stop at that. Having come so far we should press on and see what more we can learn. First of all we should construct a little table to summarize the structure of the beginning of the Tahua text:

If these numbers are meant to be more than a playfield for number juggling, then we should interpret the 24 last glyphs as referring to the sun, because there are 24 glyphs in the X area + the day time area.

Then we may use the idea of three wives of the sun to divide those 24 glyphs into 3 groups:

 

We find affirmative evidence in the glyphs telling us that we have understood correctly:

The first line starts and ends with associations to the sun (new year illustrated by two big sun 'eyes' respectively henua with an appendix ending in a 'fist' becoming a 'sun flower')

The middle line starts and ends with 'fishy' glyphs (mago and ika according to Metoro).

The last line starts and ends with strange glyphs sharing a general appearance.

But the 'middle' glyph tells us that there is more to find out, because it is not located in the middle among these 24 glyphs. At the moment, however, I have no good clue to work from.

Instead, let me point at the two glyphs (Aa1-58 -- 59) which indicate a new-born sun:

Together they are probably rather close in meaning to the a.m. 'feeding suns', e.g. Aa1-22:

In ancient Egypt there was a hieroglyph (mes = child) with a similar type of hand towards mouth:

According to Wilkinson mes not only meant 'child', but also 'to conceive' and 'to give birth', and the word may be the origin to such names as Moses, Thutmoses (Djhehuty-mes, 'Thot gave birth to him') and Ramses (Ra-mes-su, 'Ra gave birth to him').

The mes-child has his forefinger in his mouth, sucking on his finger as a little child. The gesture of 'feeding' in the rongorongo glyphs describing a.m.-sun, though, probably do not convey the meaning of sun sucking on his own finger.

The Greeks - says Wilkinson - misread the mes hieroglyph and thought the gesture meant 'hand over mouth' = silent. The Polynesians (if they once were confronted with mes) may have misread too, associating the fingers with 'hunger' (for 'light' from the 'moon'). But probably the idea of representing 'young', 'beginning' etc by way of a little child with finger in mouth may arise everywhere without outside influences. And maybe the Polynesians understood the sign better than the Egyptians themselves, as they were so far away from their beginnings.

I think that fingers are important signs and therefore it is interesting to note that the Egyptians sometimes chose other finger(s) than the index finger for sucking:

The sun child here is enclosed in a loop (signifying eternity) in form of a snake. Possibly this snake is the origin of the great Tuna who everywhere in Polynesia is involved with the origin of niu (the coconut palm):

'Soon afterwards Maui took a wife, and this led to the first of the exploits that he performed with the help of the jawbone of his ancestress. His wife went one day to wash herself in a still stream, and while she was in the water Tuna roa, the ancestor of eels, came slithering around her and made himself objectionable. That is, he touched her most improperly. When she went home she said to Maui: 'There is a man in that pool with very smooth skin.'

Maui at once felt jealous and decided to kill Tuna. He dug a trench beside the pool, and laid down nine logs as skids, so that Tuna might slide over them as when a canoe is launched. Then he told his wife to sit near the trench while he put up a screen to hide himself. Soon Tuna was seen swimming towards her, and as he slithered over the skids Maui ran out and slew him with the enchanted weapon. One end of Tuna went into the sea and became the ngoiro, or conger eel. The other end of Tuna became the fresh-water eel and is still called tuna. A part of him became the kareaou, or supple-jack, whose smooth black canes, like eels among the river-weed, entangle the forest undergrowth today. And the blood of Tuna was absorbed by the rimu, the totara, and other trees, giving their wood its reddish colour. After this exploit Maui lived quietly with his wife, and children were born to them.'

Maybe Metoro's word totoro has something to do with totara? In totara the last part -tara 'points' at the time of beginning.

 

However, the Rapanui word totoro (according to Vanaga) means 'to crawl; ki totoro te poki, when the baby crawls.' Churchill has: 'aka totoro, to take root.'

The word totara (according to Vanaga) has to do with 'frizzy': 'moa totara, frizzy.' Curly hair was always associated with small children in ancient Egypt (as can be seen in the picture of the sun-child inside the snake above).

I think there is a play of words with totara, changing toto (blood) into tota to get a 'yoke' with the new combination to - tara.

 

Toto 1. Blood; he-gaaha te toto mai roto mai te haoa, blood gushes from inside the wound; toto hatukai, coagulated blood. 2. Rust; to rust. Vanaga. Blood, bloody, to let blood, to make bloody, to bleed, to dissolve, rust; ariga toto, florid, ruddy complexion; hakatehe ki te toto, to bleed; toto pine, to bruise; toto ohio, iron rust. Mgv., Mq.: toto, blood. Ta.: toto, blood, sap. Churchill.

Totora would then be the blood (toto) of the sungod (ra). Possibly our middle glyph Aa1-64:

depicts the sun god enwrapped in totora leaves:

'Totora reed mats were used to enwrap their precious objects (such as rongorongo boards). Reeds were used to preserve 'life' - as when mummies were enwrapped in mats.

The Maya and Aztec indians 20-day calendar had reed (Ben / Aj respectively Acatl) as number 13.

That grass is immediately preceding and jaguar (the big head-crushing night cat) immediately following seems as it should be. 

Furthermore, the year 1 Reed we remember:

 ... But what is surprising indeed was the manner of Quetzalcoatl's actual return. The priests and astrologers did not know in what cycle he was to reappear; however, the name of the year within the cycle had been predicted, of old, by Quetzalcoatl himself. Its sign was 'One Reed' (Ce Acatl), which, in the Mexican calendar, is a year that occurs only once in every cycle of fifty-two. But the year when Cortes arrived, with his company of fair-faced companions and his standard, the cross, was precisely the year 'One Reed'. The myth of the dead and resurrected god had circumnavigated the globe.'

In The White Goddess we can read that the reed was regarded as a tree: "The reed was reckoned as a 'tree' by the Irish poets". Strangely the totora is not included among the 28 'trees' in Barthel's table:

 

It should have been in the 'textiles' column, I think. Barthel 2 gives the following explanation of why we cannot find totora:

"... the first pair of trees (hauhau and mahute) [in the immigrant lists according to manuscript E], indispensable to the island's economy, are followed by a second pair of plants that share the same environment. They are ngaatu (Scirpus riparius) and tavari (Polygonum acuminatum). Both grow in the water lakes, used by the Easter Islanders for a variety of purposes.

Rushes (SPAN. totora) were one of the most important raw materials on an island lacking an ample supply of wood. Made into mats, rushes served as beds, as packing material, and as material for the construction of huts and canoes, and they were used to make masks, hats, and many types of baskets.

The planting of rushes in the crater lakes is supposed to have been the work of the culture hero Ure. Proceeding from Anakena, Ure planted the top part of the plant in Rano Aroi, the stem in Rano Raraku, and the bottom part in Rano Kau (ME:364)."

A quick look at the map show us that Rano Aroi indeed is more northerly situated than Rano Raraku (and of cours north of Rano Kau). The 'head' is located in the north, the bottom part in the south.

Why do we have to make this detour from the subject at hand (trying to read the X-area)? Because I believe it is necessary to 'beat among the bushes' to see what 'birds' fly up. 'Birds' are needed for those who try to 'see' (augurs).

In this strange land we need 'birds' and we need the helping hand of Robert Graves:

"The twelfth tree given in O'Flaherty's list is Peith, the whitten, or guelder-rose, or water-elder, an appropriate introduction to the last month which is the true elder.

But Peith is not the original letter; it is a Brythonic substitution for the original letter NG, which was of no literary use to the Brythons, or (for that matter) to the Goidels, but which formed part of the original series.

The NG tree was the Ngetal, or reed, which becomes ready for cutting in November.

The canna-reed, which grows from a thick root like a tree, was an ancient symbol of royalty in the Eastern Mediterranean.

The Pharaohs used reed scepters (hence Egypt is satiriziced by the prophet Isaiah as a 'bruised reed') and a royal reed was put into Jesus's hand when we was attired in Scarlet.

It is the tree from which arrows were cut, and therefore appropriate to a Pharaoh as a living Sun-god who shot off his arrows in every direction as a symbol of sovereignity.

The number twelve has the sense of established power, confirmed by the Irish use of reeds in thatching: a house is not an established house until the roof is on. The month extends from October 28th to November 24th."