Let us begin with ehu:

There is a kind of logic here. When the great fire has ended there are only ashes left. It is as if the fire had been covered by a carpet of dust - he-kehu te raá. Hawaiian ehuehu means darkness arising from dust, fog, or vapour. Sun is no longer a force to be respected - kefu they could have said on Niuē.

In a separate page from the item ehu in my Polynesian dictionary is enumerated the possible uses of ehu (and the variants in other dialects):

	dust	ashes	vapor	darkness	twilight	muddy
Samoa	efu	lefu		nefu		nefu
Tonga	efu	efu		nefu	nefu	ehu
Niuē	efu	efu	lefu
Uvea	efu, nefu	efu, lefu	nefu	nefu		nefu
Futuna	efu	lefu		nefu
Nukuoro	rehu	lefu
Maori	nehu	rehu	ehu, nehu, rehu	rehu, nehu		ehu
Moriori		rehu
Tahiti	rehu	rehu			rehu	ehu
Marquesas	ehu	ehu			ehu
Rarotonga		reu		reu
Mangareva	ehu, neu	ehu, rehu
Hawaii	ehu	lehu	ehu	ehu, lehu

All 13 dialects have the basic meaning 'ashes', which is a concept close to 'dust' (which 11 dialects also have). Only the Moriori fishermen kept straight on the line.

Next we must notice how nehu / nefu appears to be used for ideas close to but not on the line.

The 'ashes' column has rehu / reu / lehu / lefu in addition to ehu / efu. It probably means that the basic form is rehu, not ehu.

The important star Rehua (Antares in Scorpio) announces the beginning of summer south of the equator:

... The Maori said Rehua (Antares, Ana-mua, the 'entrance pillar' of Tahiti) 'cooks' (ripens) all fruit, because it inaugurated summer when it rose in the morning sky ...

Rehua is not rehu, but certainly we should assume a wordplay involving 'ashes'. North of the equator Scorpio could signify 'ashes', but south of the equator it can hardly do so.

Next we should involve also he-rehua (of Metoro):

Aa1-5	Aa1-6	Aa1-7	Aa1-8	Aa1-9	Aa1-10
ko te moa	e noho ana ki te moa	e moa te erueru	e moa te kapakapa	e moa te herehua	ka hora ka tetea

e moa te erueru	Oh rooster, who scratches diligently!
e moa te kapakapa	Oh rooster, who beats his wings!
e moa te herehua	Oh rooster, who ties up the fruit!
ka hora	Spread out!
ka tetea	Have many descendants!

... Herehua can be translated as 'ties up the fruit' (Barthel 2). The 'fruit' is presumably the 'skull' of the Sun King, and we should remember the fate of this skull (cfr at hua poporo and at ua), not to mention how the skull of One Hunaphu fascinated Blood Moon: ... And then the bone spoke; it was there in the fork of the tree: Why do you want a mere bone, a round thing in the branches of a tree? said the head of One Hunaphu when it spoke to the maiden. You don't want it, she was told. I do want it, said the maiden. Very well. Stretch out your right hand here, so I can see it, said the bone. Yes, said the maiden. She stretched out her right hand, up there in front of the bone. And then the bone spit out its saliva, which landed squarely in the hand of the maiden ...

He Rehua could be Antares. Possibly this star indicates also the end of summer, when he disappears from view in autumn:

"The generally accepted version of the Rehua myth, according to Best, is that Rehua had two wives, the stars on either side of Antares. One was Ruhi-te-rangi or Pekehawani, the personification of summer languor (ruhi), the other Whaka-onge-kai, She-who-makes-food-scarce before the new crops can be harvested." (Makemson)

Poike as 'the time of change of wife' fits with the changed orientation of the head in Aa1-10, and the mention of hora (summer) and tetea (growth) would seem to indicate a change from winter to summer.

And then we should also notice how teatea is part of the name of item 25, i.e. following ehu in 24 in a way similar to how tetea follows herehua:

24 ko ehu ko mahatua a piki rangi a hakakihikihi mahina		e moa te herehua
	Aa1-9
25 ko maunga teatea a pua katiki.		ka hora ka tetea
	Aa1-10

 

Next basic (polysyllabic words are open to wordplay) key word is piki:

Going up (piki) is necessary when moving eastwards from Mahatua onto the Poike peninsula and to Maunga Teatea (item 25).

This explanation is far too simple, though. We must first contemplate what Fornander has to say:

It is remarkable to find ehu (ashes) as an association connected with a location in the eastern corner of the island - the sun goes down in the west. But if we are interested in how the shadows are lengthening in late afternoon we should look east and not west. The shadows in the east are going up when sun is going down in the west.

These shadows could possibly be seen creeping upwards on the slope of Poike, but I do not think such a literal translation is the right one. Instead, the 'shadows' could refer to how the sky in the east is growing darker while the rest of the sky dome still is light. The dark 'wall' (or 'cloth') rising in the eastern sky in the evenings certainly was observed fact. I guess this is what piki rangi indicates.

With piki rangi evidently indicating the vertical dimension - Sun going down in the west and darkness rising in the eastern sky - kihikihi mahina should by contrast indicate the horizontal dimension:

Lichen lies flat on the ground. And also, kihikihi refers to ashes - by way of the colour grey. When Sun goes down the colours disappear, excepting those in the scale from black to white, with grey in the center. Moon (Mahina) cannot produce any other colour than white or gray.

Once again Fornander delivers the necessary link between words and the cosmic structure: The time of sunset was Kihi according to the Hawaiians, and we can infer it means 'the time when everything becomes grey'.

Though Moon is coloured yellow from Sun, and the stars have all the colours. Kihikihi refers to the surface of the earth, not to the 'inhabitants of the sky'.

We are now ready to look again at the whole name:

24 ko ehu ko mahatua a piki rangi a hakakihikihi mahina

First comes ehu, presumably in order to indicate how the great fire in the sky no longer is 'alive'.

Next comes a 'reflection', in form of the contrast with twin events in the east: rising darkness in the sky (piko rangi) together with the colour grey (kihikihi ) covering earth below. This grey colour comes from Moon (Mahina), she makes gray (hakakihikihi).

This contrast between the sun event in the west and the night events in the east is - it seems - a characteristic of the place Mahatua. The name could refer to mahatu, to fold:

If grey covers the earth due to the light from Moon, she can be anywhere in the sky. It is not necessary to have her low on the horizon in the west (as a contrast to Sun low on the horizon in west). But if she is there, then it should be a full moon and a low tide. A low tide is in harmony with earth high above the level of the sea. Which agrees with the situation on Poike. Earth is also the meaning of hatu.

But in Barthel 2 he has coordinated the 24th Ehu item with the beginning of the lunar cycle:

I will not attempt to revise his coordinations between lunar nights and the items on the 2nd list of place names. But I guess he went wrong at Hanga Ohiro:

"Hanga Ohiro is located (north)west of Anakena, in the exact spot where the crescent of the new moon could be seen from the royal residence above the shore in the western sky. At this point, the place name and the phase of the moon coincide, and the beginning of the month is linked to the royal residence in much the same way as the beginning of the year on the 'first list of place names'. Thus, when the traditions tell that those versed in Rongorongo used to come to Anakena in the first quarter of the moon (RM:246), the accounts refer to the lunar time appropriate for such meetings, and the statement makes sense in terms of our lunar model."

If we move Hanga Ohiro from the last day of the lunar month to night number 20, the arguments for Anakena as a place to look for the new moon will not be changed. Ohiro (1) is the opposite of Hanga Ohiro (20).

There is more to say of course, there always is. In order to keep track of time over the year it could be debated whether to look at the sky in the early morning to find out which constellation or star is rising heliacally, or whether to look in the evening to find out which constellation or star the sun goes down with.

Neither alternative is very good, because you must do such observations at a certain time and you must not look straight in the face of Sun. Maka wela the Hawaiians said, your eyes will be burnt:

... Like the sun, chiefs of the highest tabus - those who are called 'gods', 'fire', 'heat', and 'raging blazes' - cannot be gazed directly upon without injury. The lowly commoner prostrates before them face to the ground, the position assumed by victims on the platforms of human sacrifice. Such a one is called makawela, 'burnt eyes' ...

You could avoid looking Sun in the eye by observing which star was rising before Sun (or descended after Sun in the evening). However, there is another complication:

... Colonists who arrived in New Zealand from Central Polynesia during the Middle Ages and intermarried with the tangata whenua, 'people of the land', found themselves between the horns of a calendrical dilemma. They must either convert the aborigines to the Pleiades year beginning in November-December or themselves adopt the Rigel year [together with heliacal rising observations] and bring down the wrath of their ancestors on their own heads ...

A star will rise in the early morning at different times depending on the latitude of the observer. Makemson thought the Rigel year was a consequence of some island 10º south of the equator:

... can be explained only on the assumption that the very first settlers ... brought the Rigel year with them ... some other land 10° south of the equator where Rigel acquired at the same time its synonymity with the zenith ..

I am not convinced. The Gilbertese sky dome said Rigel was located at 8º S, Antares at 26º S, and the Pleiades at 24º N, numbers filled to the brim with other 'sacred' meanings:

Once (in pyramid times) Sun reached to 24º on either side of the equator. 8 is the 'perfect number', and 26 is twice 13 (and also where Easter Island is located). The Gilbertese had all 3 numbers correct, including Rigel at 8º S. They were careful with the details. Moving across the vast ocean with an orientation 2º wrong would spell 'disaster'.

However, when observing a star rising it was necessary to know the latitude of the observer, to compensate for the curvature of the earth. To relate the position of a star which is rising (or going down) to the local horizon is possible, but not a very good method. Not for a people making voyages up and down the latitudes.

But there is an ingenous method to determine the time of the year independent of latitude or other local phenomena (such as mountains hiding the horizon), viz. to use the moon. When there is a full moon we know there is a straight line between moon and sun and with us somewhere in the middle. A full moon can be seen from all latitudes, the moon is so distant that the latitude of the observer is insignificant.

If the observer knows his starry sky well, he will immediately be able to determine which location the full moon occupies, i.e. which stars are close. Then by a quick mental operation he will twirl the starry globe in his head to find the 'antipodal' point in which sun must be, which 'station' on the path of the year sun is in, what the time of the year is. This method gives the same result irrespective of latitude. The method is described by Worthen.

I remembered this when reflecting on why piki appears in item 24. Watching the shadows created by the rays of Sun is similar to watching the full face of Moon. There is a straight line connecting a shadow with its source, likewise the illuminated face and its source.

The double calendar system of India could have been used also in the rongorongo texts. The appearance of the 3 bird islets outside Rano Kau (at the beginning of spring) appears to be reflected in the 3 'peaks' of Maunga Teatea (not far from Rano Raraku):

Kau means midnight according to Fornander. At the other end we find noon (Ao-akea). Akea can be transcribed as atea, presumably the central 'daytime' of Sun. The double form (teatea) means 'heavy rain' according to the Mangarevans, which indeed agrees with what we have understood comes at the 'back side' (side 2 of a 'tablet'). Ehu ûa (not far from Rehua) means drizzle.

Maybe Maunga Teatea should be crossed from right to left. The last of the 'front side' would then be item 24 (Mahatua). In the G text day 240 is at Gb1-10 and 1-10 is the same number as in Aa1-10:

Gb1-5	Gb1-6	Gb1-7	Gb1-8
Gb1-9	Gb1-10 (240)	Gb1-11	Gb1-12

Aa1-5	Aa1-6	Aa1-7	Aa1-8	Aa1-9	Aa1-10
ko te moa	e noho ana ki te moa	e moa te erueru	e moa te kapakapa	e moa te herehua	ka hora ka tetea

 

"In Hindu legend there was a mother goddess called Aditi, who had seven offspring. She is called 'Mother of the Gods'. Aditi, whose name means 'free, unbounded, infinity' was assigned in the ancient lists of constellations as the regent of the asterism Punarvasu. Punarvasu is dual in form and means 'The Doublegood Pair' ['Two Good Again' according to Allen]. The singular form of this noun is used to refer to the star Pollux. It is not difficult to surmise that the other member of the Doublegood Pair was Castor.

Then the constellation Punarvasu is quite equivalent to our Gemini, the Twins. In far antiquity (5800 B.C.) the spring equinoctial point was predicted by the heliacal rising of the Twins (see fig. 6.6). By 4700 B.C. the equinox lay squarely in Gemini (fig. 6.7).

Punarvasu is one of the twenty-seven (or twenty-eight) zodiacal constellations in the Indian system of Nakshatras. In each of the Nakshatras there is a 'yoga', a key star that marks a station taken by the moon in its monthly (twenty-seven- or twenty-eight-day course) through the stars. (The sidereal period of the moon, twenty-seven days and a fraction [27.3] , should be distinguished from the synodic, or phase-shift period of 29.5 days, which is the ultimate antecedent of our month.)

In ancient times the priest-astronomers (Brahmans) determined the recurrence of the solstices and equinoxes by the use of the gnomon. Later they developed the Nakshatra system of star reference to determine the recurrence of the seasons, much as the Greeks used the heliacal rising of some star for the same purpose. An example of the operation of the Nakshatra system in antiquity can be seen in figure 6.9

Here we see that the spring equinox occurred when the sun was at its closest approach to the star Aldebaran (called Rohini by the Hindus) in our constellation Taurus. But, of course, the phenomenon would not have been visible because the star is too close to the sun for observation. The astronomers would have known, however, that the equinoctial point was at Aldebaran by observing the full moon falling near the expected date or near a point in the sky exactly opposite Aldebaran (since the full moon is 180º from the sun), that is, near the star Antares; see fig. 6.15.

The system of Nakshatras, then, is quite distinct from systems that use the appearance of heliacally rising or setting stars as the equinoctial marker. Furthermore, the Indian system is all but unique in that two calendar systems competed with each other - a civil system, in which the year's beginning was at the winter solstice, and a sacrificial year, which begins at the spring equinox. The beginning of the former was determined by the Nakshatra method, observing the winter full moon's apparition near the point of the summer solstice in the sky (as explained above).

The arrival of the beginning of the sacrificial year might be determined by the Nakshatra method - observation of the spring full moon near to the autumn Nakshatra in Virgo. More commonly, however, it was determined as in the Greek system, by direct observation of the heliacal rising of a sign star. In the current calendar, for example - one unchanged since the fifth century A.D. - the yoga star of the Nakshatra Ashvini (beta Arietis) ushers in the spring equinox at its heliacal rising."

(Worthen)