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TRANSLATIONS
It appears to be rather difficult to use the G text as the sole source for explaining the structure of the K text. Possibly we have come as far as we can go that way. The text of G moves on into kuhane land on side b, leaving the trail of the blazing sun rolling downhill into the sea at Nga Kope Ririva. The sea is the domain of the moon, the back side, the dark regenerative part of the world. We have deduced that ika hiku identifies the last part of the 'day':
And then follows the hua poporo season predicted in Ga7-15, which the K text has no reason to mention in its parallel glyph Kb4-19 - there is not room enough for more text on the tablet:
Looking in the text of Q we can observe what may be a similar turn of events:
The unusual Qb2-19 has 3 points at left and 4 'feathers' at right, and the left eye has come loose. I interpret the glyph to describe the situation when the spring sun has been beheaded. According to my classification scheme the glyph is a variant of honu, but I guess Metoro would have said nuku. One interesting example:
3 (etoru) he said, which cannot be seen in the glyph. I think he for his inner mind saw three limbs at left. The rat (kiore) has turned around - his feet have lost contact with the land. His head (puoko) is in his 'hat' (ha'u). Ika hiku is a strong mark, meaning there are few such glyphs. Both in G and Q there are only two such, located fairly close together. In K there is only one. The meaning 'tail of the fish' suggests there are two 'tails' in G and Q but only one in K. The shorter K text has no need for two ika hiku glyphs, because the 'back side' is not described in K. The 'tail fish' in K must refer to the end of sun's journey. Its location at Kb4-16 probably alludes to 4 * 16 = 64, a number wich like the number of squares on a chessboard refers both to the arable land and to its potential for growth (1, 2, 4, 8, 16, 32, 64). 8 * 8 is the 'quarter' where 'sun walks on the land'.
Of the two ika hiku glyphs in G the first one (Ga7-12) should be parallel with the one in Kb4-16, not only in location but also in meaning:
Also nuku maro etoru (Eb5-26, see above) has these limbs in both directions, which I guess refer to the solstice. Its ordinal number suggests that it is located at the end of half a year which is 364 days long. Maybe, therefore, the K text has 10 extracalendrical glyphs. They could be the last 10 glyphs of the text:
I am suspicious about Kb5-11 and Kb5-13, because the other glyphs appear to be unharmed. It would not surprise me if there never was any glyph at position 183. And Kb5-13 may have been drawn like a 'ghost' exactly as it looks today. The other ika hiku in G is located 15 glyphs away from the first one:
3 limbs at right (in Ga7-27) could mean the spring fish has turned his head downwards, in which case 3 limbs at left will look like 3 limbs at right. It should be the 'tail fish' of the back side. 472 - 197 = 275. Ga7-28 could be the first glyph of the 2nd 'fish', possibly also 197 glyphs long, in which case there will remain 275 - 197 = 78 glyphs at the end of the text. Comparing with the K text, with - possibly - 10 extra glyphs at its end, we can guess that of those 15 glyphs lying between 182 and 197 five of them might function as a 'preface' to the 2nd fish:
472 - 191 = 281, but maybe this time we should not count Gb8-30, and the 2nd backside fish could be 14 * 20 glyphs long. |
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