|
TRANSLATIONS
It can still be argued that it is an open question whether the 24 period calendar of E (and that of K) covers half a year or a whole year. Each glyph could cover 2 days. When the sun is rolling down into the water in the west it could refer to the winter solstice when a new fire is needed. On the other hand midsummer should also result in a 'needfire' situation: ... needfire ceremonies usually take place near the summer solstice (the Feast of St. John) ... Each household in the village was constrained to contribute a shock of straw to the nearby high place, Stromberg, where the males went at evening while the females went to a spring lower down on the slope. A huge wheel was wrapped with this straw. An axle run through the wheel served as the handles for those who were to guide it on its downward plunge. The mayor of a nearby town kindled the straw, for which office he was rewarded with a basketful of cherries. All the men kindled torches and some followed the burning orb as it was released downhill to shouts of joy. The women at the spring echoed these shouts as the wheel rushed by them. Often the fire went out of its own accord before it reached the river, but should the waters of the river extinguish it, an abundant vintage was forecast for that year ... The reason why this needfire was located at midsummer and not in midwinter revolves around several points: a) at midsummer sun is high up in the 'mountain' and the quick 'plunge' makes for maximum effect, b) the summer heat had produced straw which served as good fuel for the wheel, c) we humans have a tendency to get too hot in the worst heat of summer which causes us to jump into the water to cool down, and in a world with magic relations between the inhabitants of sky and earth the action of jumping into the water would be absolutely wrong if not also the sun needed to be 'beheaded', d) in midwinter sun should need some help from human fires to start up anew - then sun is at his lowest, presumably he has slowly cooled down since his plunge at midsummer - but that is another situation, a situation in which it would be absolutely wrong to let the wheel roll down into the water. With the name 'needfire' cannot be meant that sun needs more fire. It must instead be the watery world which needs to be heated. Sky and earth have been pushed too far apart. It is time to fell the cosmic tree. Thus people would rush down the hills on banana-tree barks in order to induce the sun to follow.
Beyond the 24th and last period of the E calendar comes:
With Eb7-1 a new glyph line commences, and the waves hidíng the head and the hand sign 'waving' goodbye say the season now has changed dramatically. Sun and earth ares no longer far apart and a hipu (calabash) glyph will hopefully be the result: ... And when his head was put in the fork of the tree, the tree bore fruit. It would not have had any fruit, had not the head of One Hunaphu been put in the fork of the tree. This is the calabash, as we call it today, or 'the skull of One Hunaphu', as it is said. And then One and Seven Death were amazed at the fruit of the tree. The fruit grows out everywhere, and it isn't clear where the head of One Hunaphu is; now it looks just the way the calabashes look ... Beyond midsummer comes the season of the fruits (hua poporo - presumably the 'berries' of the Black Rat). When we find two ika hiku glyphs in a text they could indicate the presence of two calendars, one for the sun and one for the moon. If so, then side a of G could cover a whole year. On the other hand, the two calendars could each cover a part of the year. The 2nd calendar like the mirror of the 1st one, with everything reversed and upside down. The story evidently continues beyond sun's splashing down into the water outside the southwest corner of the island. The K tablet has no room for what follows, and the kuhane stations are hardly visible. It is a one-eyed vision of the world, maybe the text was created after the missionaries had arrived. Ika hiku are fishes fused together (conjoined) without any head being visible, which A gives a good illustration of:. It is a good (maitaki) situation, when sun 'takes a bath':
At Eb6-26 a moe glyph says it ends:
6 * 26 = 12 * 13 = 156, 6 more than 150, and moe is number 6 counted beyond Eb6-20 (6 * 20 = 120). 174 = 6 * 29. Next phase in the developemt introduces ua (Eb6-34), and at 6 * 29.5 = 177 a fullgrown season (tagata) says we have counted right:
Nga Kope Ririrva (left part of Eb6-27) is connected with a hole. Like outside Helgoland there are three islets and a whirlpool. The imagery used in E is quite different from that in K, which - of course - is mostly due to the perspective (two eyes contra one eye):
The one-eyed view of the world reminds me of how Odysseus fared when he had been captured in the cave: ... Odysseus and his fleet were now in a mythic realm of difficult trials and passages, of which the first was to be the Land of the Cyclopes, 'neither nigh at hand, nor yet afar off', where the one-eyed giant Polyphemus, son of the god Poseidon (who, as we know, was the lord of tides and of the Two Queens, and the lord, furthermore, of Medusa), dwelt with his flocks in a cave. 'Yes, for he was a monstrous thing and fashioned marvelously, nor was he like to any man that lives by bread, but like a wooded peak of the towering hills, which stands out apart and alone from others.' Odysseus, choosing twelve men, the best of the company, left his ships at shore and sallied to the vast cave. It was found stocked abundantly with cheeses, flocks of lambs and kids penned apart, milk pails, bowls of whey; and when the company had entered and was sitting to wait, expecting hospitality, the owner came in, shepherding his flocks. He bore a grievous weight of dry wood, which he cast down with a din inside the cave, so that in fear all fled to hide. Lifting a huge doorstone, such as two and twenty [22 * 4 = 88] good four-wheeled wains could not have raised from the ground, he set this against the mouth of the cave, sat down, milked his ewes and goats, and beneath each placed her young, after which he kindled a fire and spied his guests. Two were eaten that night for dinner, two the next morning for breakfast, and two the following night. (Six gone.) But the companions meanwhile had prepared a prodigous stake with which to bore out the Cyclops' single eye; and when clever Odysseus, declaring his own name to be Noman, approached and offered the giant a skin of wine, Polyphemus, having drunk his fill, 'lay back', as we read, 'with his great neck bent round, and sleep that conquers all men overcame him.' Wine and fragments of the men's flesh he had just eaten issued forth from his mouth, and he vomited heavy with drink.
'Then', declared Odysseus, I thrust in that stake under the deep ashes, until it should grow hot, and I spake to my companions comfortable words, lest any should hang back from me in fear. But when that bar of olive wood was just about to catch fire in the flame, green though it was, and began to glow terribly, even then I came nigh, and drew it from the coals, and my fellows gathered about me, and some god breathed great courage into us. For their part they seized the bar of olive wood, that was sharpened at the point, and thrust it into his eye, while I from my place aloft turned it about, as when a man bores a ship's beam with a drill while his fellows below spin it with a strap, which they hold at either end, and the auger runs round continually. Even so did we seize the fiery-pointed brand and whirled it round in his eye, and the blood flowed about the heated bar. And the breath of the flame singed his eyelids and brows all about, as the ball of the eye burnt away, and the roots thereof crackled in the flame. And as when a smith dips an ax or adze in chill water with a great hissing, when he would temper it -for hereby anon comes the strength of iron - even so did his eye hiss round the stake of olive ... |
