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Guy's Reviews Examined

by Sergei V. Rjabchikov

Unfortunately, the point of view expressed by J.B.M. Guy in his article "Comments on Rongorongo Research" is very subjective. It is no wonder, because he is not a specialist in deciphering of ancient scripts, he is a comparative Austronesian linguist only. Prior to the publication of my first article he published two articles in the Journal of the Polynesian Society. In one of them (Guy 1982) he demonstrated with the help of the limited material that all the compound glyphs should be read upward, though I adhere to more general principle found out by I.K. Fedorova (1986: 241) that it is possible to read such glyphs not only upwards, but vice versa as well. Recently Guy (1998) expressed a supposition that genealogies are written down on the Santiago staff. It is not a new idea, because it was proposed by A.M. Kondratov (1976) in the comment to T.S. Barthel's book "Grundlagen zur Entzifferung der Osterinselschrift". I remind it not to diminish Guy's achievements, but only to stress the following idea: as he is not a detached onlooker, but one of the potential decipherers (true, who is not in a hurry with his investigations), his preconceived attitude towards my results is programmed beforehand.

Let us take up first Guy's (1988) review published in the Journal of the Polynesian Society.

1. Certainly, the methodology of the decipherment was not treated in two articles (Rjabchikov 1987, 1988a), and I had no such purpose at that time. Later on I prepared a reply to Guy and sent it to the editorial board of the Journal, but it was not published. This manuscript, "Some Ideas about the Easter Island Script", is kept in author's collection. As far as I know, this Journal has refused to publish a review by Guy to an article written by S.R. Fischer, so I do not find anything unusual in the decision of the editorial board. The methodology of my decipherment is explained in my works (Rjabchikov 1993a; 1995: 3-21).

I have published more than 70 works on the rongorongo script and Rapanui culture. I use my own personal classification and translation scheme for reading the rongorongo glyphs. The points of Guy's review cannot characterize my decipherment as an unsuccessful one. I suggested to read some glyphs taking into consideration the alteration of the sounds of the Polynesian languages (Rjabchikov 1987: 361). Among other things, I suggested to read glyph 26 not only as maa (the main reading), but also as mua (this reading is found not often). In fact the glyph 26 reads maa, and the correction of reading is possible only after transcription of the text. And it is no wonder! In particular, I.K. Fedorova (1978) uses the principle of variation of the sounds for the correct interpretation of incomprehensible words rather often.

Guy has studied my reading of separate fragments of inscriptions and has obtained even new "readings" of the glyphs on these grounds. Let us examine these "interpretations": 4 [tua] and 26 [nga]. In the first case let us consider the Maori words putua and putu 'to accrue'. It is not an abstract example, because the word 45-4-45-4 putu(a)putu(a) is written in the rongorongo texts which we shall study below. Glyph 4 reads atu, but if it is presented as an open syllable, it reads tu. The sound a can be added to the obtained word in order to make the word correspond to the modern vocabulary. One can suggest the name of the Rapanui witch Nuahine Pike Uri 'The Old Woman 'The Black Crab'' (Felbermayer 1965) where the word pike can be compared with the standard Rapanui word pikea 'crab'. Guy reads glyph 26 not only maa, but also nga. I act in another way. The words 44-26-15 and 44-26 read Tamaro and Tama respectively (Rjabchikov 1988a: 317), they are the names of a god (because these words are introduced by the glyph combination 6-4 a atu, i.e. a atua 'deity'); besides, these Tama[ro]s are three personages, and the name of the triple god Kahi 'Tuna' is put down before them. Tuna is an epithet of the god Tangaroa (Fedorova 1978: 23-4), otherwise Makemake. Furthermore, the triple sea god is depicted on the heads of wooden figurines moai kavakava and moai tangata (Heyerdahl 1976: photos 27, 34, 35, 36). Moreover, a stone decorated with the three heads was kept in the cave Ana o Kahi 'The Cave of the Tuna' (Heyerdahl 1976: photo 215a). These new facts make us read once more the name Tamaro as Tangaroa. In Maori beliefs Tama-nui-te-rais a name of the sun (Best 1955: 51), but tama (cf. Rapanui tama 'boy; male', Tahitian tama 'child') and nui 'big' correlate with Rapanui tanga 'youth' and roa 'large, big' (1). The sounds m/ng alternate in the Polynesian languages, e.g., Rapanui tumu 'base' and tungu 'stone'; tumu and tungu 'to cough'; gerami [he rami] (Mellén 1986: 113) and rangi 'sky'. But it does not result from it that glyph 26 reads nga.

In my opinion, Guy does not know simply that "beautiful" readings of the texts of the ancient written languages are the result of the hidden draft work of the investigators. I.M. Diakonoff (1982: 294), the leading Russian expert on decipherments of the ancient scripts, has expressed his opinion on the problem of phonetic reading of ancient texts: "It only seems to us that we read a Maya text or a Sumerian text adequately from the phonetic point of view; partly it is explained by the fact that modern transcriptions try "to phoneticize" the reproduction of an ancient text with its non-monosemantic signs. ... Not an ancient Maya language of the authors of the inscriptions has been reserved till nowadays, but the modern Maya dialects which differ dramatically from it and which can hardly serve as a quasi-bilingual source for the decipherment of the Maya script." Here is a characteristic example of Y.V. Knorozov's decipherment of the Maya hieroglyphic script (Knorozov, Ershova 1986) connected with the translation of the Maya texts being available on the ceramic vessels. On one vessel the word chi-ti 'good' is taken down which has been compared by the scholars (Knorozov, Ershova 1986: 149; 151) with the Old Maya word kich 'saint' (taking into account alternations of the sounds ch/k, t/ch which are the features of the Maya language). Maybe, if Guy had known about such reading of the Maya text, he would have suggested the new readings for the Maya hieroglyphs: 671 (not only chi, but also ki) and 59 (not only ti, but also chi). After it Guy would have been able to suggest new variants of reading of the Maya inscriptions! Luckily, Guy put forward the variants of reading of one rongorongo text only. One should not be astonished at plurality of reading of a sign of an ancient script. For example, the sign GUL was written in Sumerian cuneiform, and an ancient reader chose the reading gul or sun (Diakonoff 1982: 298).

2. I am glad that Guy agrees with the variants of glyph 15 found out by me and with my reading of glyph 2 Hina, the name of the moon goddess.

3. I should like to dwell on the criticism of the variants of glyph 31made by Guy which are presented thrice as reduplications 31-31.

w3.gif

Figure 1.

Figure 1 corresponds to figure 5, fragments 1 and 2 from my article published in the Journal of the Polynesian Society (Rjabchikov 1998a: 319). Glyph 31 Maki (modern Make) correlates with W.J. Thomson's (1891: 481-2) description of the rock pictures of the god Makemake: "... the most common figure is a mythical animal, half human in form, with bowed back and long claw-like legs and arms. According to the natives, this symbol was intended to represent the god "Meke-Meke", the great spirit of the sea." Both glyphs 31 Maki presented in the first fragment are depicted in the common style. Both glyphs of the first pair 31-31 exactly correspond to the second glyph of the second pair 31-31, and the first glyph of this pair is the partially changed second glyph.

Guy (1988: 322) agrees that "only the first two fragments belong to parallel texts", and then claims that "from the reproductions in Barthel's "Grundlagen" it will be noted that their immediate contexts are rather dissimilar".

w4.gif

Figure 2.

Let us analyze these parallel rongorongo records written on the Great St. Petersburg tablet (Pv 5) and on the Great Santiago tablet (Hv2/3) (see figure 2).

These texts contain repeated sequences of glyphs, colour-coded in the accompanying illustration (see figure 3). Variants of glyphs 6 and7 were determined by comparing similar-looking strings of glyphs from different rongorongo tablets (Rjabchikov 1988a). The transcription of the texts is:

w5.gif

Figure 3.

1(Pv 5):   45-4-45-4 65 7 19 6 19 62 68 19 31-31 19 45 19 6-7
2(Hv 2/3): 45-4-45-4 65 7  6 6  6    68  6 31-31  6 45  6 6-7

Both records are rather similar indeed. Glyph 62 is omitted in the second fragment. So the particles are dissimilar: in the first fragment there are prepositions 19 ki 'toward, to, for, at', kia 'toward, to, for, according to' (in green), and in the second fragment there are articles 6 a (in yellow).

The first fragment reads: Putuputu RANGI tuu: ki Ha, ki Toa, Honu, ki Makimaki, ki Pu, ki Hatu ... The second fragment reads: Putuputu RANGI tuu: a Ha, a Honu, a Makimaki, a Pu, a Hatu ...

The generic determinative 65 RANGI 'SKY' is a key to these rongorongo inscriptions (Rjabchikov 1987: 361). Glyph 7tuu signifies 'star', cf. Rapanui hetuu, Old Rapanui tuu 'star'. The word putuputu is comparable with Maori putu 'to lie in a heap; to lie one upon another; to swell, to increase, to multiply; to be heaped up', putu 'heap', putuputu 'close together'. Putuputu apparently is a verb in the records; thus, Putuputu RANGI tuu... means 'The stars (constellations) are situated...' The term Honu 'Turtle' is a symbol of the Pleiades in Tuamotuan and Easter Island belief systems (Lee 1992: 80; Rjabchikov 1993b: 23; 1993c: 5). Then the term Toa reads Toe, cf. Rapanui ko Toe 'a star in the Auriga (Charioteer) constellation' (2). The term Ha is equal to Maori Whanui [Wha-nui] 'the star Vega (Alpha Lyrae)' (Best 1955: 63-4), and the star Pu is obviously Hetuu Pu 'Aldebaran (Alpha Tauri)' (3). The names Makimaki (Makemake) and Hatu (4) symbolize the sun; see my article "Three Notes on the Easter Island Religion".

I have used the RedShift 2 computer program to look at the stars above Easter Island. For instance, data of June 22, A.D. 772 are as follows: the beginning of dawn: 05:42, sunrising: 07:05; setting of Vega: 04:24; rising of Capella: 05:41; rising of Aldebaran (Alpha Tauri): 03:52. So the texts describe the sunrise and the corresponding map of the stars.

The parallel folklore text is presented in the "He timo te akoako" chant (Heyerdahl, Ferdon 1965: fig. 127):

...                            ...
para atua ruga e               The Shine-deity is rising.
para kava tohua                The Shine-Rib-Light.
a hama te riu                  The Chest (of Tane) is shining.
iki, mo noho                   (The sun) is rising, and it lives
i roto i te Pu                 at the Pu.
e para e                       Oh, the Shine! (5)
...                            ...

It should be noted that Guy reads glyphs 6-6 as Hiro 'the new moon', cf. the wordplay he rua 'two' (see his article "The Easter Island Tablets"), but why not try to use my reading of glyph 6 ha? Glyphs 6-6 read Haha: cf. Samoan Fafa 'the place of the dead' and Japanese Haha-no kuni 'the land of the dead'. To find additional references to the term Haha, please visit my Rongorongo Home Page (figures 5 and 6), and articles "Several Rongorongo Records (Symbolism of Archaic Beliefs)" (figure 5), Rongorongo Script: Reading of Some Records" (figures 1 and 6).

I should like to discuss Guy's "Comments on Rongorongo Research" now.

Actually, the address of my home page is different: http://oocities.com/script_rongorongo/index.htm ("RONGORONGO, Easter Island Writing" Home Page).

1. I insist that a genealogy is presented on the Small Santiago tablet (figure 1 of my article "The Rapanui Chant "He Timo te Akoako": Origin and Interpretation"), but I also agree that another genealogy is presented on the same tablet. One thing does not interfere with another. In the same way the presence of Mars in the solar system does not refute the presence of other planets, for example, Venus. Moreover, on this home page there is the article "Rongorongo Script: Reading of Some Records" where I consider the genealogy discovered earlier (Butinov, Knorozov 1957: 15; table 7). Undoubtedly, it is a key to the mysterious writing system. That is why I read an article of personal names 6 which introduces the names of personages as a (Rjabchikov 1988b). Moreover, I have interpreted this genealogy in the paper "The Chronology of the Rapanui History" (Rjabchikov 1994: 3) at the conference "Macklay Readings" (Peter the Great Museum of Anthropology and Ethnography (Kunstkammer), St.Petersburg, Russia; April 14-15, 1994; the chairman: N.A. Butinov). Therefore Guy's accusations look like groundless.

2. In conformity with Guy, "Rjabchikov writes: "puberty rites were performed in November-December (month Koro)". This is a misinterpretation of Metraux, himself quoting Routledge: "The tangata-tapa-manu subsequently repeated the ritual at any koro which were being held on the island". "Koro" means "festival", which is even evident from the context. There is a month called Koro, but it corresponded mostly to February (the calendar was luni-solar, with a 13th, embolismic month, so there was no strict correspondence between their calendar and ours, see "A propos des mois del'ancien calendrier pascuan" Journal de la Societe des Oceanistes, 94/1: 119-125. 1992)."

Please glance over my article "The Rapanui Chant "He Timo te Akoako": Origin and Interpretation". K. Routledge (1998: 267) also informs on the same page: "The details of manu were more satisfactory. It was known as "te manu mo te poki," or, "the bird for the child," and the child so initiated became a "poki-manu," or "bird-child". ... A number of children, each with an expert, then went up to Orongo; the correct month was December, and the Ao were therefore below at Mataveri." Hence the poki-manu rites were performed in December (6), and according to Métraux (1940: 51), Rapanui month Koro corresponds to December. Notice that Routledge mentions the term 'December', and then I translate it as Koro. But Koro did not "correspond mostly to February". Guy's opinion is pure fantasy.

NOTES

1. The names of Tangaroa and Tane denote a man (Fedorova 1978: 18, 339). Cf. also Rapanui tamaaroa, tamaroa 'male'. Moreover, Tangaroa and Tane are the sun gods; they change each other in different Polynesian myths. In some Maori myths Tiki is regarded as a personification of the procreative powers of Tane (Buck 1938: 265). The name of the Maori sun god Maui-tikitiki includes the name of the god Tiki.

2. Perhaps it is the star Capella (Alpha Aurigae).

3. Fedorova (1982: 52, 1993: 264) reads combination 7 70 as hetuu Pu 'the star Aldebaran'. It is a correct reading; note that she does not use so-called "readings" of an Easter Islander, Metoro, in this case. The main mistake of Dr Fedorova as well as my other opponents is the using of Metoro's "readings" as a base of the decipherment of the rongorongo script. I also read glyphs 7 25 tuu Hua as a version of Aldebaran's name (Rjabchikov 1993c: 6). The name Hetuu Pu denotes 'The star produces', as the rising of the Pleiades (they also belong to the Taurus constellation) was connected with first two months of the year in Mangareva (Métraux 1940: 52).

4. Cf. the name of the god Tiki-te-Hatu (Métraux 1940: 321).

5. Cf. Maori para 'to shine clearly', tahu 'to burn; to set on fire, light', Samoan Atafu 'land where the sun lives' (Polinskaya1986: 309). Maybe, the name of the Tahua tablet is associated with light or fire (the sun god). In Maori the expression riu o Tane is registered (riu 'chest'). The term hama is comparable with Rapanui amo 'to clear up' and Japanese ama 'sky'. Cf. also Maori hiki 'to lift up, to raise'.

6. Fedorova (1978: 346) connects these rites with December, too.

REFERENCES

Best, E., 1955. The Astronomical Knowledge of the Maori. Dominion Museum Monograph No 3. Wellington: R.E. Owen, Government Printer.

Buck, P.H. (Te Rangi Hiroa), 1938. Vikings of the Sunrise. Philadelphia - New York: J.B. Lippincott Company.

Butinov, N.A. and Y.V. Knorozov, 1957. Preliminary Report on the Study of the Written Language of Easter Island. Journal of the Polynesian Society, 66: 5-17.

Diakonoff, I.M., 1982. Kommentariy (Comment to the Russian edition of Gelb, I.J., 1963, A Study of Writing. Chicago - London: University of Chicago Press). In: Gelb, I.J. Opyt izucheniya pis'ma (Osnovy grammatologii). Moscow: Raduga, pp. 293-306.

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Heyerdahl, T., 1976. The Art of Easter Island. London: George Allen & Unwin.

Heyerdahl, T. and E.N. Ferdon, Jr (eds.), 1965. Reports of the Norwegian Archaeological Expedition to Easter Island and the East Pacific. Vol. 2: Miscellaneous Papers. Monographs of the School of American Research and the Kon-Tiki Museum, 24(2). Stockholm: Forum Publishing House.

Knorozov, Y.V. and G.G. Ershova, 1986. Nadpisi maya na keramicheskikh sosudakh. In: Y.V. Knorozov (ed.) Drevnie sistemy pis'ma. Etnicheskaya semiotika. Moscow: Nauka, pp. 114-51.

Kondratov, A.M., 1976. Kommentariy. In: I.M. Diakonoff (ed.) Tayny drevnikh pis'men: Problemy deshifrovki. Moscow: Progress, p. 559.

Lee, G., 1992. The Rock Art of Easter Island. Symbols of Power, Prayers to the Gods. Los Angeles: The Institute of Archaeology Publications (UCLA).

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Rjabchikov, S.V., 1987. Progress Report on the Decipherment of the Easter Island Writing System. Journal of the Polynesian Society, 96:361-7.

Rjabchikov, S.V., 1988a. Allographic Variations of Easter Island Glyphs. Journal of the Polynesian Society, 97: 313-20.

Rjabchikov, S.V., 1988b. Note on Butinov and Knorozov's Investigation. Rapa Nui Journal, 2(2): 6.

Rjabchikov, S.V., 1993a. Rapanuyskie texty (k probleme rasshifrovki). Etnograficheskoe obozrenie, 4: 124-41.

Rjabchikov, S.V., 1993b. Notes on the Easter Island Script. L'Écho de Rapa Nui, 6(24): 22-3.

Rjabchikov, S.V., 1993c. Tayny ostrova Paskhi. Vol. 2. Krasnodar: Severny Kavkaz.

Rjabchikov, S.V., 1994. Khronologiya rapanuyskoy istorii. Krasnodar: DENOS.

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Thomson, W.J., 1891. Te Pito te Henua, or Easter Island. Report of the United States National Museum for the Year Ending June 30, 1889. Annual Reports of the Smithsonian Institution for 1889. Washington: Smithsonian Institution, pp. 447-552.


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