Rongorongo (;

Rapa Nui Easter Island ( rap, Rapa Nui; es, Isla de Pascua) is an island and special territory of Chile in the southeastern Pacific Ocean, at the southeasternmost point of the Polynesian Triangle in Oceania. The island is most famous for its nearly ...

: ) is a system of glyphs discovered in the 19th century on

Easter Island Easter Island ( rap, Rapa Nui; es, Isla de Pascua) is an island and special territory of Chile in the southeastern Pacific Ocean, at the southeasternmost point of the Polynesian Triangle in Oceania. The island is most famous for its ne ...

that appears to be

writing Writing is a medium of human communication which involves the representation of a language through a system of physically inscribed, mechanically transferred, or digitally represented symbols. Writing systems do not themselves constitute h ...

proto-writing Proto-writing consists of visible marks communicating limited information. Such systems emerged from earlier traditions of symbol systems in the early Neolithic, as early as the 7th millennium BC in Eastern Europe and China. They used ideograp ...

. Text A of the

rongorongo Rongorongo (Rapa Nui: ) is a system of glyphs discovered in the 19th century on Rapa Nui (Easter Island) that appears to be writing or proto-writing. Numerous attempts at decipherment have been made, with none being successful. Although some c ...

corpus, also known as ''Tahua'', is one of two dozen surviving texts.

Other names

A is the standard designation, from Barthel (1958). Fischer (1997) refers to it as RR1. It is also known as the Oar ''(la rame),'' the object from which it was made.

Location

General archives of the '' Padri dei Sacri Cuori'' (SSCC), Casa Generalizia, Via Rivarone 85, I-00166 Rome, Italy. Reproductions are located at the SSCC; the Bishop Museum, Honolulu; and the ''

Cinquantenaire The Parc du Cinquantenaire ( French for "Park of the Fiftieth Anniversary", pronounced ) or Jubelpark (Dutch for "Jubilee Park", pronounced ) is a large public, urban park of in the easternmost part of the European Quarter in Brussels, Belgi ...

,'' Brussels.

Description

''Tahua'' is the cut-off blade of a narrow, rectangular European or American oar, 91 x 11.5 x 2 cm, said to be made of

European ash ''Fraxinus excelsior'', known as the ash, or European ash or common ash to distinguish it from other types of ash, is a flowering plant species in the olive family Oleaceae. It is native throughout mainland Europe east to the Caucasus and Albo ...

, though the wood has never been tested. It is in excellent condition, with a few ink stains and a few small holes and notches.

Provenance

One of Jaussen's tablets, ''Tahua'' was apparently collected on

by Fathers Roussel and Zumbohm in 1870 and sent to him in Tahiti. It was sent to the headquarters of the ''Congrégation des Sacrés-Coeurs et de l'Adoration'' (SSCC) in Paris, where it was deposited in the Missionary Museum, either by Jaussen in 1888 or by the French navy in 1892 after his death. In 1905 it was moved to the SSCC museum in

Braine-le-Comte Braine-le-Comte (; nl, ’s-Gravenbrakel, ; wa, Brinne-e-Hinnot) is a city and municipality of Wallonia located in the province of Hainaut, Belgium. On January 1, 2018, Braine-le-Comte had a total population of 21,649. The total area is whic ...

, Belgium. In 1953 it followed the SSCC to

Grottaferrata Grottaferrata () is a small town and ''comune'' in the Metropolitan City of Rome, situated on the lower slopes of the Alban Hills, south east of Rome. It has grown up around the Abbey of Santa Maria di Grottaferrata, founded in 1004. Nearby comm ...

, near Rome, and in 1964 to Rome itself. In 1974 the SSCC moved to its permanent headquarters in Rome.

The proper starting point of the inscription is unclear. (Jaussen's informant Metoro Taua Ure 'read' it starting with side b.) Kudryavtsev discovered that several lines of ''Tahua'' were paraphrased on the Large St. Petersburg tablet (tablet P). Barthel (1958) noted sections of the ''Taure'' text repeated, in seemingly random distribution, on tablets B ''Aruku'', C ''Mamari'', E ''Keiti'', H Large Santiago, P Large St Petersburg, and Q Small St Petersburg. Butinov (1959:74) suggested that ''Tahua'' might contain a genealogy.

Text

There are eight lines of glyphs on each side, with a total of ~ 1,825 glyphs. Through comparison of phrases shared with other texts, Pozdniakov has established that the reading order of the lines follows Barthel, though the order of the two sides may still be either a–b or b–a. ;Barthel ;Fischer

Image gallery

Image:Rongorongo_A-a_Tahua_left.jpg, Side a left end Image:Rongorongo_A-a_Tahua_center.jpg, Side a center Image:Rongorongo_A-a_Tahua_right.jpg, Side a right end Image:Rongorongo_A-b_Tahua_left.jpg, Side b left end Image:Rongorongo_A-b_Tahua_center.jpg, Side b center Image:Rongorongo_A-b_Tahua_right.jpg, Side b right end

References

* BARTHEL, Thomas S. 1958. ''Grundlagen zur Entzifferung der Osterinselschrift'' (Bases for the Decipherment of the Easter Island Script). Hamburg : Cram, de Gruyter. * BUTINOV, Nikolai A. 1959. ''Ieroglificheskie teksty ostrova Paskhi (Rapa-Nui).'' Vestnik istorii mirovoi kul'tury, Moscow, pp. 69–80. * FISCHER, Steven Roger. 1997. ''RongoRongo, the Easter Island Script: History, Traditions, Texts.'' Oxford and N.Y.: Oxford University Press. * POZDNIAKOV, Konstantin (1996). "Les Bases du Déchiffrement de l'Écriture de l'Ile de Pâques (The Bases of Deciphering the Writing of Easter Island)". ''

Journal de la Société des Océanistes A journal, from the Old French ''journal'' (meaning "daily"), may refer to: *Bullet journal, a method of personal organization *Diary, a record of what happened over the course of a day or other period *Daybook, also known as a general journal, a ...

'' 103 (2): 289–303.

External links

Barthel's coding of text A
{{Rongorongo Rongorongo inscriptions