TRANSLATIONS

TRANSLATIONS

If glyph line a3 was reserved for the time when Sun becomes separated from Earth, from then on rising higher and higher towards midsummer, and given that we 'translate' line a3 as 'Pisces', then the preceding glyph line a2 could correspond to 'Aquarius':

If pare in *Qa2-40 should represent day 240, which we have found quite possible, then its location at Te Pei could correspond (or allude) to Aquarius, another dark sign. From Te Pei to Roto Iri Are there are 5 * 29.5 = 147½ days. We have counted to 160 days between pare and haati, which gives a month 'measured by the Sun' as 32 days:

		318
*Qa2-40 (63)	*Qa2-41		Qa9-41	Qa9-42	Qa9-43 (385)	Qa9-44
day 240		*320 / 2 = 160 = 5 32**			day 400
*Te Pei*					*Roto Iri Are*

In the Dendera zodiac we can find the 8th month ('Te Pei') at Leo 'in the sky' (6 months beyond Aquarius). He is the only sign in a boat high in the sky, but there is also the bluemarked Sothis cow. Also this sign is 6 months beyond Aquarius.

The central bluemarked signs seem to be approximately as far away from spring equinox north of the equator as their corresponding blackmarked signs. The bluemarked belong in the south and the blackmarked in the north, but they appear close together in time.

During summer (north of the equator) Sky (Sun) and Earth are separated because the ecliptic path 'forces' Sun (with his blackmarked zodiacal constellations) above the equator of the sky dome, while the bluemarked signs continue to follow the sky equator (e.g. Orion).

But the bluemarked signs are also 12 in number. They are cramped together in summer and therefore Leo is not precisely above the Sothis cow.

If we extrapolate we can from Leo (respectively from Sothis) move clockwise 5 Sun signs ahead in order to search for Roto Iri Are. The blackmarked 'goat-fish' (Capricorn) is sign number 13 given that we have Aquarius as number 2. Of course Capricorn is also number 1 (because there are 12 blackmarked signs).

The 'goat-fish' is expressing a radical change involving land (goat) and water (fish). The renewal comes in station 'one more' (than 12). Iri-are is a kind of sea-weed (surface-of-the-water plant).

The 13th bluemarked sign - given Aquarius as number 2 and also counted - is the backward looking lion with his paws on a water basin. Once again land and water together seem to signify a 'station of renewal' (12 + 1). Above this lion is Libra with a sun child (Harpokrates) on top.

In the Dendera zodiac there is no addition with signs, similar to the bluemarked ones, from around the sky equator when the path of the sun (the ecliptic) goes south. Why not?

I guess one way to answer the question is to say that the bluemarked signs together illustrate the shape of a crescent, and Moon should not be up in the 'sky' but down in the 'water'. 'Fire' (Sun) on the other hand cannot be down in the water. Therefore the zodiac has been created to resemble a great canoe (the bluemarked signs) containing the 'sky' ('fire').

The blackmarked signs delineate a circle and it can be imagined as a great sail (raa). It would in other words be the same idea as in this petroglyph from Easter Island (in Heyerdahl 3):

According to the current situation the blackmarked Aquarius, Capricorn, Sagittarius, Scorpio, and also Libra, have been forced below the sky equator (the 'water line'). This is another argument for not needing any more bluemarked extra signs in winter (north of the equator) - these zodiacal signs are already 'down in the blue'.

We can therefore understand that the 4 blackmarked Aquarius - Scorpius should be counted together with the 12 blue signs, and the result is 16 'water signs' (= 472 / 29.5). Maybe the text of G consists of a description of 16 'water signs' (periods dictated by the Moon). On Easter Islands they must have been aware of their position and of the corresponding location on the sky dome.

Libra is 'inside the Moon canoe', and below it is the first of the blue figures (with a fool's cap) at the beginning of the 12-sign sequence. On the other hand this is counterbalanced by the last of the blue signs (the circle with a 'baby hippopotamus' inside) coming immediately after Pisces. I think the last of the blue signs is the lower of the 2 fishes, and that the blue circle touching it belongs to the sign, just as the circle around Harpocrates touches Libra and belongs to the sign. The upper fish, on the other hand, is not touching the circle with the Sun eye (wedjat) - because that way it becomes a sign for separation, showing how sky now is rising above the earth.

The 'overlapping' Libra and Pisces signs are straddling the border lines between summer and winter respectively winter and summer, north of the equator:

Pisces emerges from the midpoint of the staff of a bluemarked figure, and I guess it corresponds to Hatinga Te Kohe - the ruler*s staff is breaking and the two pieces will each generate a 'fish'.

... The old man gave the Raven two small sticks, like gambling sticks, one black, one multicoloured. He gave him instructions to bite them apart in a certain way and told him to spit the pieces at one another on the surface of the sea. The Raven climbed back up the pole, where he promptly did things backwards, just to see if something interesting would occur, and the pieces bounced apart. It may well be some bits were lost. But when he gathered what he could and tried again - and this time followed the instructions he had been given - the pieces stuck and rumpled and grew to become the mainland and Haida Gwaii ...

Pisces stands at autumn equinox south of the equator and the blue perching bird on top of a pillar will be at winter solstice. It comes 3 signs later.

South of the equator the ecliptic above and the more or less circular paths of the planets appear to move them counterclockwise (as if there was a whirlpool on the surface of the 'water'). North of the equator the planets move with the Sun clockwise, seen from below they move with the Moon counterclockwise.

The Sothis cow I have put together with Leo - they are both on board boats. Leo is the 8th of the blackmarked signs (counted from Capricorn and moving clockwise). Moving clockwise from Hatinga Te Kohe (number 12 of the kuhane stations) we will find Sothis as number 16. If we move counterclockwise Sothis will be number 24, which possibly corresponds to Te Pei at kuhane station number 8 (= 24 - 16).

If Sothis is assigned number 8, then the perching bird will be number 9, perhaps Te Pou - which would agree with the picture of a pillar. Gemini (the blackmarked twins above) is according to astrology at midsummer (north of the equator). However, precession has moved Gemini (and Canis Major with Sirius) 1 hour forward (and soon Orion will be at midsummer). Astrology is a conservative business and it has frozen its zodical signs.

A quarter of the precessional cycle ago Gemini was at spring equinox, and it was The Golden Age.

Returning now for a moment to the text of Q and the meaning of pare in *Qa2-40 I think the 2nd glyph line on the front side of the tablet could allude to Aquarius or to Sothis or to Te Pei. They are dark watery signs and 8 * 30 = 240.

The bluemarked signs seem to be in summer north of the equator, and therefore in winter south of the equator. But earlier I have put Te Pei at high summer, because I believed there was a continuity from the end of the front side onto the back side. However, that is not necessary. And even if there is a continuity it could be of another sort.

I will not easily abandon the results of my earlier efforts and therefore I will continue to believe that Te Pei is at the beginning of the back side not only of the G tablet but also in the calendar of the year.

One mysterious and so far unexplained component is why the figures in the Dendera zodiac are not only facing the rising Sun but also appear to describe sequences of events moving counterclockwise (e.g. from Khnum and forward to Satit). Even seen from a position south of the equator the constellations will move in the same direction as the sun. We presumably have to understand this phenomenon before we can connect the text of G (and the rest of the rongorongo texts) with the round zodiac of Dendera.

Maybe we then can solve the problem I have created by on one hand suggesting Hatinga Te Kohe to be at Pisces, 3 signs later than winter solstice (the blue perching bird), and on the other hand suggested Roto Iri Are to be below Libra at the lion with his paws on 'water'. Roto Iri Are is the next kuhane station beyond Hatinga Te Kohe, but in the Dendera zodiac the blue lion comes 9 signs later than Pisces.

We need a few separate pages in order to discuss if sequences of signs can move against the normal order of time.

The Golden Age is used in Hamlet's Mill for the time when Gemini marked spring equinox and Virgo stood at midsummer. Pisces was at winter solstice and Sagittarius at autumn equinox (maybe shooting his 'arrow' into the close by 'water surface' to produce a new 'fire' - the old Sun had just left).

The perching blue bird on his pillar would like Gemini have been at spring equinox, and at midsummer we maybe should find the seated blue 'eastern bank of the Nile', the waxing Moon (front side) of Anuket.

But the constellations could have been different. Jensen thought so and below I quote him via Lockyer:

'We have already above (p. 90) attempted to explain the striking phenomenon that the Bull and Pegasus, both with half-bodies only, ήμίτομοι, enclose the Ram between them, by the assumption that the latter was interposed later, when the sun at the time of the vernal equinox was in the hind parts of the Bull, so that this point was no longer sufficiently marked in the sky.

Another matter susceptible of a like explanation may be noted in the region of the sky opposite to the Ram and the Bull. Although we cannot doubt the existence of an eastern balance, still, as already remarked (p. 68), the Greeks have often called it χηλαί ‘claws’ (of the Scorpion), and according to what has been said above (p. 312), the sign for a constellation in the neighbourhood of our Libra reads in the Arsacid inscription ‘claw(s)’ of the Scorpion.

These facts are very simply explained on the supposition that the Scorpion originally extended into the region of the Balance, and that originally α and β Libræ represented the ‘horns’ of the Scorpion, but later on, when the autumnal equinox coincided with them, the term Balance was applied to them. Although this was used as an additional name, it was only natural that the old term should still be used as an equivalent. But it also indicates the great age of a portion of the zodiac.'

"... Let us suppose that what happened in the case of Aries and Libra happened with six constellations out of the twelve: in other words, that the original zodiac consisted only of six constellations.

The upper list not only classifies in an unbroken manner the Fish-Man, the Goat-Fish, the Scorpion-Man, and Marduk of the Babyloniana, but we pick up all or nearly all of the ecliptic stars or constellations met with in early Egyptian mythology, Apis, The Tortoise¹, Min, Serk-t, Chnemu, as represented by appropriate symbols."

¹ I think I am right about the Tortoise, for I find the following passage in Jensen, p. 65, where he notes the absence of the Crab: ‘Ganz absehend davon, ob dasselbe für unsere Frage von Wichtigkeit werden wird oder nicht, muss ich daran erinnern, das unter den Emblemen, welche die sogenannten 'Deeds of Salè' häufig begleiten, verschiedene Male wie der Scorpion so die Schildkröte abgebildet gefunden wird’.

Chnemu (Khnum) is useful for us, because he is here stated to be equivalent with Capricorn (the Goat-Fish), and he will then (appropriately) be number 1 among the blackmarked signs of Dendera.

But if Pisces at that time was at winter solstice, then Capricorn (Khnum) would be located a doublemonth earlier, in the dark time when people were waiting for the new year to arrive. Which in a way agrees with how I have interpreted the blue Khnum with his 'digging stick' in the Dendera zodiac, down in the earth there is no light.

Maybe the blue zodiac has been compressed and the blue Khnum has a position 3 months earlier than the blue 'hippotamus Pisces' - thought of as positioned at winter solstice, as in the Golden Age. The absence of blue signs in the interval Scorpio - Aquarius could illustrate a 'crack in time' through which the current age breaks forth (according to path of the Sun which moves with the precession). From Tama to the front side of the G text there are 3 months.

The Tortoise (number 7 counted from the Goat-Fish) has been put equal to Cancer, also a valuable item for us. Counting with only 6 signs the Tortoise will be number 3, i.e. on the other side of the sky compared with the Goat-Fish.

Now to Hamlet's Mill:

"Men's spirits were thought to dwell in the Milky Way between incarnations. This conception has been handed down as an Orphic and Pythagorean tradition fitting into the frame of the migration of the soul. Macrobius, who has provided the broadest report on the matter, has it that souls ascend by way of Capricorn, and then, in order to be reborn, descend again through the 'Gate of Cancer'.

The Goat-Fish, I guess, has a fish tail in order to illustrate the movement up from the water into the branches of the tree of cosmos. And Cancer, we have just concluded is opposite to the Goat-Fish.

Macrobius talks of signs; the constellations rising at the solstices in his time (and still in ours) were Gemini and Sagittarius: the 'Gate of Cancer' means Gemini. In fact, he states explicitly (I,12.5) that this 'Gate' is 'where the Zodiac and the Milky Way intersect'.

Far away, the Mangaians of old (Austral Islands, Polynesia), who kept the precessional clock running instead of switching over to 'signs', claim that only at the evening of the solstitial days can spirits enter heaven, the inhabitants of the northern parts of the island at one solstice, the dwellers in the south at the other ...

Considering the fact that the crossroads of ecliptic and Galaxy are crisis-resistant, that is, not concerned with the Precession, the reader may want to know why the Mangaians thought they could go to heaven only on the two solstitial days. Because, in order to 'change trains' comfortably, the constellations that serve as 'gates' to the Milky Way must 'stand' upon the 'earth', meaning that they must rise heliacally either at the equinoxes or at the solstices. The Galaxy is a very broad highway, but even so there must have been some bitter millenia when neither gate was directly available any longer, the one hanging in midair, the other having turned into a submarine entrance ..."