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TRANSLATIONS
This is the last glyph in the day calendar of Small St Petersburg tablet. The other three day calendar texts (in A, H and P) move on past noon until evening, but in Q the text stops at noon, or to be more precise: With the event of sun turning around, 'hakaturou' (with the Frenchinfluenced spelling of Bishop Jaussen), i.e. according to the reading of A and Metoro: With sun starting to descend.
If we compare with the corresponding glyphs in the other texts, we can see that not only Q but also A has the pointed end of the hakaturou glyph cut off:
The meaning probably is just that: something is cut off. We immediately guess that it is the a.m. period. It cannot mean that the text of the calendar is here cut off - because in A the text continues. "But the time of his predestined defeat by the dark brother, Tezcatlipoca, was ever approaching, and, knowing perfectly the rhythm of his own destiny, Quetzalcoatl would make no move to stay it. Tezcatlipoca, therefore, said to his attendants, 'We shall give him a drink to dull his reason and show him his own face in a mirror; then, surely, he will be lost'. And he said to the servants of the good king, 'Go tell your master that I have come to show him his own flesh!' But when the message was brought to Quetzalcoatl, the aging monarch said, 'What does he call my own flesh? Go and ask!' And when the other was admitted to his presence: 'What is this, my flesh, that you would show me?' Tezcatlipoca answered, 'My Lord and Priest, look now at your flesh; know yourself; see yourself as you are seen by others!' And he presented the mirror. Whereupon, seeing his own face in that mirror, Quetzalcoatl immediately cried out, 'How is it possible that my subjects should look upon me without fright? Well might they flee from before me. For how can a man remain among them when he is filled as I am with foul sores, his old face wrinkled and of an aspect so loathsome? I shall be seen no more, I shall no longer terrify my people'." (Campbell) The process of descending is not as splendid a process as that of growing up. Maybe that was the reason the author of Q decided to quit at noon. But there are other possible explanations: "The sun was like a person when he revealed himself. His face was hot, so he dried out the face of the earth. Before the sun came up it was soggy, and the face of the earth was muddy before the sun came up. And when the sun had risen just a short distance he was like a person, and his heat was unbearable. Since he revealed himself only when he was born, it is only his reflection that now remains. As they put it in the ancient text, 'The visible sun is not the real one ... ' What might lie behind this statement is revealed by a contemporary Mopán Maya tale in which Lord K'in (the sun) goes from his home in the east to the center of the sky and then back to the east again; it appears that he goes clear across the sky because he has placed a mirror at its center." (Popol Vuh) At noon, a cardinal point, the sun boat needs to change direction, to turn back (hoki amuri). The mast is shifted to a new position (in the Polynesian way) in order to tack (hoki). The return voyage should be the same route as the vessel came by. I cite myself: The ancient peoples seem to have 'played with mirrors'. Cfr the mirror of Tezcatlipoca (= 'smoking mirror' in the Nahuatl language according to the comments to Popol Vuh) and the mirror of obsidian with a torch which is placed on the forehead of Tohil. The 'mirrors' are examples of the magic games, in which similar structures not only were similar but could be grouped together so that each structure represented all the other similar structures and were causally connected to them. E.g. the stars in the Big Dipper (7) were connected to the 'planets' (7) and also to the Pleiades (7). The stars in the Big Dipper are revolving around the fixed point, and according to some opinions, drove the planets, while one the other hand the Pleiades seemed to have power to influence the Big Dipper. The p.m. sun might be just the darker brother of the real (a.m.) sun. But they are connected by being each others reversals; from dawn until noon sun makes the 'shadows' recede, from noon the forces of 'darkness' takes over. But how come that the a.m. sun suddenly disappears at noon (in order to give place for his own poorer image, his dark brother)? Where does he go? Reflecting about the cosmos of the Babylonians the answer must be that there is a door at noon through which he slips, possibly Pua Katiki:
Here my associations show that sun as a 'person' meets his female partner (Samoan toalua) at noon. He can now leave his governmental affairs to his dark brother and turn around to attend to his wife instead, go home. The top-Y in the p.m. sun-glyphs of A might mean this, that the 'female' (dark companion) rules the sun from noon onwards. But the Y-sign might also mean that some Easter Island counterpart to Tezcatlipoca takes over the government over us at noon, some 'dark smoking mirror'. To summarize. We can see different - not each other excluding - explanations for why the Q day calendar ends here: 1. When sun reaches noon the rest of his path is just a mirror-image of what happens from dawn until noon. No reason to describe that once again. 2. Seen as a boat journey, a similar argument is relevant. Why describe the return voyage, when we know the scenery? 3. Sun as a 'person' has a glorious development up until noon, but from then on his face deteriorates and we would rather avoid looking at that part of his development. 4. Sun as a 'person' will at noon reach a point where he has to 'leap', to let go of this world of ours. For us, therefore, the story ends here. A day calendar should not proceed into the dark developments after noon. 5. The force of the sun at dawn lifts the roof of the (hare paega) sky, just as Ure Honu lifted up one side of the house of Tuu Ko Ihu, then letting it fall down again.
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