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TRANSLATIONS
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A few preliminary
remarks and imaginations:
1.
An important characteristic of moko glyphs is the
rounded abdomen.
This made me recognize a sign of moko in the following glyphs:
There are no clear moko glyphs in the text of
G. Although the curious 'person' in Gb3-16 cannot be said to have an
obviously swollen stomach I anyhow
thought it useful to consider the glyph as a possible moko
candidate - its position between the pair of corpulent hanau
is suggestive. Thin moko glyphs are very rare, if they exist
at all.
Hanau glyphs, on the other hand, do not show
any signs of being fat, and the rounded bellies in Gb3-13 and Gb3-18
should therefore be considered signs of moko. The body posture with limbs spread out is
a common trait in moko and
hanau glyphs:
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2.
A fully grown stomach is what can be expected after a
long life of constant eating. Considering the similarity in body
posture between the not very fat hanau and the fat moko
- and knowing that hanau means birth - we can guess
moko means its opposite -
death.
This idea has at least some support in how the word
moko is used: '... when the members of family have died and
there remains only one man who has no offspring, we say:
ku-moko-á te ihu o te mahigo; to disappear (of a tradition, a custom),
me'e ihu moko o te tagata o te kaiga nei, he êi, the êi
is a custom no longer in use among the people of this island ...'
Already at henua ora we learned about the noble Moko
in connection with death:
'... When the man, Ulu, returned to
his wife from his visit to the temple at Puueo, he said,
'I have heard the voice of the noble Mo'o, and he has
told me that tonight, as soon as darkness draws over the sea and
the fires of the volcano goddess, Pele, light the clouds
over the crater of Mount
Kilauea, the black cloth will cover my head. And when the
breath has gone from my body and my spirit has departed to the
realms of the dead, you are to bury my head carefully near our
spring of running water. Plant my heart and entrails near the
door of the house. My feet, legs, and arms, hide in the same
manner. Then lie down upon the couch where the two of us have
reposed so often, listen carefully throughout the night, and do
not go forth before the sun has reddened the morning sky. If, in
the silence of the night, you should
hear noises as of falling leaves and flowers, and afterward as
of heavy fruit dropping to the ground, you will know that my
prayer has been granted: the life of our little boy will be
saved.' And having said that, Ulu fell on his face and
died ...'
The little baby boy, Mokuola ('Living Island'), was saved by
the 'fruits' generated from the death of his father:
'... summoning her little boy, she bade him
gather the breadfruit and bananas, and, reserving the largest
and best for the gods, roasted the remainder in the hot coals,
telling him that in the future this should be his food. With the
first mouthful, health returned to the body of the child, and
from that time he grew in strength and stature until he attained
to the fulness of perfect manhood.
He
became a mighty warrior in those days, and was known throughout
all the island, so that when he died, his name, Mokuola,
was given to the islet in the bay of Hilo where his bones
were buried; by which name it is called even to the present time
...'
The Bay of Hilo is also significant, because we have learned
from Manuscript E that Hanga Ohiro on Easter Island is
the last night (i.e., the 20th, cfr at hupee) of Waxing Moon.
Of course the growing boy must end there.
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3.
The Bay of Hiro is primarily not be looked for on
a normal map. It is not a location in space but
a location in time.
But by mapping time onto the geography of Easter Island we can anyhow
find Hanga Ohiro on the map:
This bay is located close to Anakena, in a central
position on the northern coast, and moving from west to east
(following the course of Moon) we can see that the steep coastline
('ebb') ends at Hanga Ohio. I suggest Ohio is
Ohiro slightly deformed, maybe to indicate a position in
space instead of in time.
Likewise hanau and moko should primarily be looked for
in time, not in space. Universally, however, man identifies birth
with what happens at the horizon in the east and death with the
descent in the west of everything moving in the sky. Moko
should then associate to the direction west (or southwest according
to Polynesian thought) and, furthermore, to the descent of Sun
in the evening or autumn.
Anakena is where the royal child Tuu Maheke was born:
... After Hotu's
canoe had anchoraged, the child of Vakai
and Hotu appeared. It was Tuu Maheke,
son of Hotu, a boy. After the canoe of
Ava Rei Pua had also arrived and anchoraged,
the child of Ava Rei Pua was born. It was
a girl named Ava Rei Pua Poki ...
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If we think hanau at Anakena
and moko at Hanga Ohiro, then there is a close
connection between these two places:
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Hanga Ohiro |
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Moko |
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Anakena |
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Hanau |
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Is it possible to
find autumn equinox (presumably when Summer Sun is leaving for his
winter maid) in glyph line Gb3? Close to the equator Sun disappears
quickly in the evening, like a 'lizard' shooting down into his hole.
Counted from line a1
the
line number of Gb3 is 8 + 3 = 11 ('one more' than 10), which possibly could
explain hanau moko in Gb3-13:
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Gb3-13 |
Birth is on its
way, so much is evident, and the belly must then of course be
swollen like a ripe berry. Perhaps
it is the dark half of the year who is on his way to be born.
Takaure (probably a name for 'winter') stands indeed at the
beginning of the line:
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67 |
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111 |
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Gb3-1
(292) |
Gb5-6
(360) |
Gb8-30
(472) |
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68 |
112 |
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180 |
There are 180 glyphs
to the end of side b. 292 can be read as 29 and 2 (i.e. as an
allusion to Moon), whereas 181 (the number of the first glyph on the
front side counted from Gb3-1) can be read as 18 and 1 (an allusion
to Sun).
We need
a few further pages for our
investigation.
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