TRANSLATIONS
In the midst of the night sun suddenly appears, cutting night into two parts (to reuse the ideas from the myth about Marduk and Tiamat). The sun god is called Raá and a sail is (was?) also called raá (or possibly Raá?). However, I suspect that it was not the sail but the mast which was a symbol for Raá. Missionaries had a tendency to misunderstand. The moon, symbolizing the night, is like a canoe sailing on the waters of the sky and midships there is a mast, just as we can read in the four 'day' calendars (with the possible exception of A):
The threshold to the new 'day' is standing up, not lying down. The character is 'male', not 'female'. Opposite the the 'mast' at midnight there ought to be a corresponding 'female' sign. In Tahua we found two sun-glyphs (Aa1-26 and Aa1-30) stigmatized by Y.
As these appear during p.m., I suspect that the midnight staff is located after midnight. There should be a balance. The 1st period of the 'day' ('po') begins after the midnight staff, and after noon the 2nd period of the 'day' begins with a double staff. But this should mean that the 2nd period does not begin at noon but later. The suggestion may be that the last 2 of the sun periods belong to the night. This structure (in A) will be:
This indicates that the midnight staff belongs to the new 'day' ('po'), it is not located just before the start point, it is included in the new period. (The structure is built on number 6 and to reach 6 glyphs before dawn Aa1-43 must be included). The impression is also that we have not just the distinction between light and darkness but a 3-fold division (marked above with red, black and blue). Red has 3 and black 2 and blue 1 multiple of 6 as I perceive the pattern. In H, P and Q the double Y-staff occurs where daylight is beginning to show itself:
We can try to build three structures for these calendars according to the experience from A above:
Nothing new of importance seems to be resulting. The pattern of A does not apply to these three calendars. Probably, though, the fact that 52 is twice 26 indicates that we should take more notice of Ha6-3:
It is the 14th glyph counted from dawn, and if we add the 12 night glyphs we reach 26. I.e. this glyph presumably is a kind of 'staff' to indicate that the middle of 52 now is due. The midnight staff is inside the new 'day' / 'po' and this middle mark glyph is inside the same half of 'day' / 'po' as the midnight staff. By counting glyphs in H we here have strengthened the impression that there should be two heads at the end of the day, just as in the parallel glyph Pa5-64:
Crosswise strengthening and weakening is the fundamental method of reassembling the pieces of a jigsaw puzzle. Which reminds me: I should mention that there is a crosswise strengthening for my suggestion that this type of glyph
is composed from four glyph types, among which is included toko te ragi (GD32)
possibly to show how the sky is being lifted up so that light may come in. This crosswise strengthening is evidence found in all four table texts Ab3-13 -- 19, Ab5-21 -- 26, Ha3-38 -- 42, Ha3-44 -- 48, Pa3-29 -- 33, Pa3-35 -- 39, Qa3-25 -- 29, Qa3-31 -- 35 and is consisting of double sequences of glyphs containing both toko te ragi and sun, showing that there is a connection between the two:
We can also see that before toko te ragi we have variants of the glyphs type which Metoro sometimes named atua mago (GD61) and which look like the introductory glyph for the night (in H, P and Q): Both the eating sun glyph type and GD61 are unusual, which ensures that there really (objectively) are crosswise relations between the day calendars and the double sequences of glyphs above. Let us return to H and counting. There are several ways to count:
All three ways of counting were used, of that I am convinced. Whether all three 'levels' were used at the same time, however, is not quite clear yet. But I guess all three levels were used at the same time and as often as possible. We have above shown that probably in the calendar of H we should 'read' glyphs by counting and draw conclusions, and that the designer of the text meant us to find 26 times two. As for counting marks on tapa mea we have this pattern:
During p.m. we have in the P calendar 6 marks on all tapa mea glyphs, and we may therefore guess that there are 6 marks also on all p.m. tapa mea in H too. (In A there are normally also 6 marks, but only 5 in the period corresponding to number 8 in H.) We should, however, have learnt by now that the possibilities to draw conclusions about details from one text to a parallel one is practically nil. The sum of marks (on tapa mea in H) for the first 4 periods is 20. The sum must be larger for the last 5 periods. If we count with 6 also for the last two periods we arrive at 5 * 6 = 30, a number which does not appear odd. Thereby we have 6 periods with 6 marks on tapa mea, which amounts to 36, a possible intention in the mind of the creator; especially as 20 + 30 - 36 = 14, i.e. we have accounted both for sun and for moon. Are there marks to count in the night? Possibly we should count number of 'arms' on the tôa glyphs:
I have not inserted any ?-marks here, although we do not know for certain what the number of 'arms' are on the glyphs at the beginning of the night. Therefore the table contains just a suggestion. There are two lines of numbers and a thírd summing up line. The first number line contains 'arms' which are 'closed' ('male') and the second number line 'arms' which are 'open' ('female'). We note that after midnight the number of 'arms' are one for each glyph, whereas before midnight the numbers are even. If 'closed' means 'male' then we may interpret the absence of 'open arms' at midnight and just before dawn as the presence of the (male) sun. There are 12 'arms' before midnight and 3 after midnight, perhaps indicating that the time of the moon in a way does not stretch beyond midnight. Sun starts at midnight. If we count number of 'arms' on Y at the top of tôa, all of which (presumably) are 'open', we get 10 * 2 = 20. If we count number of 'feathers' we get 3 + 5 + 6 = 14. Both these sums seem to have been intentionally chosen, 14 to connect to the moon and 20 as a natural sum to reach when counting (a number base). It all seems very orderly and beautiful. But why are there 9 'periods' of tapa mea? Maybe we should count to 6 only (disregarding, dawn, dusk and 'night' - the last 'period'). That may be so, but there must be some explanation for 9; there are 10 day periods in both A and P. I have not yet found any reasonable explanation. There is also an imbalance in the distribution:
Are there 2 periods at the end of the day to signal 2? Is that a method of telling the reader about 2, equivalent to the two suns with Y in A? Possibly. Another possible explanation may be that 9 = 3 * 3. If sun is characterized by 3 and if he has 3 wives, then perhaps we should have 3 * 3 = 9 periods for the day. Continuing this line of thought, we may say that 3 * 4 = 12, because each wife is characterized by 4. In the table over open and closed 'arms' above we have 4 as the sum of open 'arms. But the sum 11 for closed 'arms' seems to be wrong, we should have an even number. Reinvestigating the glyphs I find that we indeed have to correct the table into:
I have inserted a new line (as number two in order above), where the 2 items represent henua-like 'arms'. The other (closed) arms are more rounded (somtimes like fins). The distinction between the two different 'arm' ends does change the patterns. The combinatorial possibilities are very many, and it is difficult to draw reliable conclusions about what was in the mind of the creator of this text. I would, however, like to point out that there is a bilateral symmetry around midnight in the first of the lines, with 2 items at left and 2 at right, the difference between these two groups being that the open 'arm' disappears at midnight. The 4 at left in the same line appears to be of a different kind. Therefore 9 = 4 + 2 + 1 + 2., or 9 = 4 + 5. Does this 9 sum have anything to do with the number 9 as sum for the day periods? In the second line midnight (where the new day is beginning) has a sign of henua, and there is also a sign of henua in the glyph where the night may be the beginning (a henua which is also located on the right side of the tôa 'body'). This - if correct - implies that the first three glyphs at left constitute a kind of introductory group of glyphs. As to why there are only 9 day periods there might be an explanation from purely practical reasons. Because if the creator had decided to put a sign for the midpoint in the sequence of glyphs
and if this midpoint was to be located at 'Poike', i.e. at noon, that decision would put pressure on him. The calendar must contain the whole night and half the day before the midpoint was reached and then would remain only the other half of the day + the X glyphs. There would be too many glyphs before the midpoint. Maybe he therefore eliminated the 3rd period (cfr A and P). That elimination would decrease the number of day periods from 10 to 9 and the number of glyphs before noon would be a few less. Similar reasons may have caused the creator of Q to eliminate the 3rd period. There could have been some influence between the creators of H and Q. We have seen that there are other similarities between the calendars of H and Q, e.g. in the design of the dawn glyphs:
We now know that (presumably) the big 'wings' of the P variant indicate moon, and that P and Q may both be 'inclined' towards moon, whereas A and possibly also H are 'inclined' towards sun. That is a tentative result based on counting, A square (rhomb) between the 'arms' of H (and presumably also in A) in contrast to the hexagons of P and Q confirm that we indeed should group H together with A. Though the elimination of the 3rd day period is a common trait in H and Q. During the time after midnight we should also compare these glyphs:
Once more we may explain the double-canoe in H as a way to decrease the number of glyphs (as compared to P). And we may imagine an influence between the creators of H and Q. However, the creator of Q compensated the disappearance of one glyph (as compared to P) with adding a new glyph immediately before his canoe:
|