Rongorongo

Rongorongo table (Aroukouru-Kurenga)

Rongorongo (German song, recitation, lecture ) is the name of the unique script on Easter Island . In Oceania , a writing system has only developed on this remote island. It is completely isolated and cannot be compared to any other font on earth. To date it has not been deciphered, although there are some approaches to interpretation.

The term rongorongo does not originally come from Easter Island, but from Mangareva . There the word referred to a high-ranking class of experts who were able to memorize sacred chants and recitations during the rites on the marae . It probably came to Easter Island around 1870 through returnees from the Catholic mission in Mangareva.

Purpose and meaning

The writing served - there is broad consensus on this - exclusively for the purposes of a religious and power-political elite. Polynesian tribal society was strictly stratified and hierarchical. At the top were the ariki (chiefs, tribal chiefs), the owners of all resources. Simultaneously with their worldly power, they also symbolized the highest religious authorities. They were supported by a caste of priests and nobility, often close family members. In Polynesia , traditions - and in a strictly hierarchical social order these were mainly understood to mean rules, rites and genealogies of rule - were passed on in the form of recitations and ritual chants. Such knowledge was important for the continuity of the dynasties, as the rulers had to trace their legitimacy back to the founding ancestors in an uninterrupted sequence.

Knowledge was domination knowledge and therefore it is evident that knowledge of such traditions was reserved for certain persons. Masters passed on their knowledge orally to selected students. The verbatim repetition of the texts was given the highest religious significance. The development of mnemonic aids was therefore a valuable achievement.

Father Sebastian Englert reports from such a writing school:

“An old man who attended class in his youth told some people still alive today [the 1930s]: The discipline was very strict. The students had to learn the lyrics first. They were not allowed to speak or play, but had to be careful, crouching on their knees, hands clasped in front of their chests ... After the students had learned to recite the texts, they began to copy the characters to get used to the writing. These copying exercises were not done on wood, but with a stylus made from a bird's bone on banana leaves. Only when they had reached a certain degree of perfection did the students write on wooden boards, preferably from Toromiro. They used very fine obsidian splinters or sharp shark teeth for this incision. "

- Sebastian Englert: La Tierra de Hotu Matu'a , 1975

The Rongorongo script was therefore a memory aid for initiated reciters in order to be able to recite chants of religious significance without errors. With the exception of Easter Island, however, this development step has not been taken anywhere else in Polynesia.

Construction and reading

The writing is predominantly (called on wooden panels kohau Rongorongo ; dt as: songs in lines or rows.) As well as a wooden ceremonial staff, two reimiro and a Moai Tangata Manu deposited. In total, only 25 authentic written certificates have survived worldwide. They are scattered across museums around the world, none of which remained on Easter Island.

Detail from the small Santiago plaque

The tablets show glyphs arranged in rows , which represent human figures, anthropomorphic or zoomorphic beings, animals, plants, body parts, graphic symbols and objects of daily use. For most of the signs, the models in nature can still be recognized, others are already largely abstracted.

It is now undisputed that it is not a question of hieroglyphic writing in which the characters are directly opposed to real objects. It is no longer on the level of pictography (symbolic picture writing), but consists of ideograms , ie of characters that represent a whole concept. Thomas Barthel was of the opinion that key terms are presented in order to reduce the oral traditions to a kind of telegram style, a form of memory aid (mnemogram) for the reciter.

Reading is done in lines in a variation of the bustrophedon from left to right and from bottom to top. Ie the reader starts at the bottom left and reads the bottom line from left to right. Then the board is rotated 180 degrees and the next higher line is read. Most of the panels are written on both sides and the text continues uninterrupted on the reverse side, i.e. H. the continuation from the A-side begins at the top left on the B-side.

The tablets, rolled up in rush mats , were kept in the paenga houses and had a tapu on them . Ordinary tribesmen were not allowed to touch them; they were only presented to the public on special occasions, festivals and rites. They were particularly sought-after items on military campaigns. Reading the tablets was reserved for the tangata rongorongo , scribes who were recruited from the families of the chiefs and nobles. With the collapse of culture towards the end of the 17th century, interest in literacy seemed to die out. The last great scribe was the Ariki Ngaara of the powerful Miru clan, who is said to have owned a few hundred tablets. The last few literate people apparently did not survive the infectious diseases brought in by Europeans and the kidnapping of numerous islanders in the mid-19th century as contract workers to Peru and Chile.

The characters

Barthel's drawing of copy G (back)

All of the literature that has been handed down comprises only around 14,000 characters. The font consists of a total of 600 symbols, which can, however, be reduced to 120 basic components that are used as structural elements. Thomas Barthel recorded these signs, cataloged them, divided them into groups and carried out a statistical analysis. Its grouping and coding with three-digit numbers is in principle still valid today, although others have since made refinements and additions to this system.

Barthel's system:

Code number	to form
Characters 001-099	graphic symbols, plants, nature objects
Characters 100-199	rare geometrical shapes and personifications
Characters 200-299	anthropomorphic figures, head in front view
Characters 300-399	anthropomorphic figures, head in side view
Characters 400-499	Head in side view on various body shapes and figures with pantomime
Characters 500-599	special head shapes
Characters 600-699	Bird shapes
Characters 700-799	other animal forms

Within the codes 200–299 and 300–399, the human figures are divided into subgroups, depending on their posture, they are represented by the numbers 1 to 7 in the tens. The respective hand shape is shown in the units place. According to this system, each character in the Rongorongo script can be designated as a three-digit number, which makes statistical evaluation, for example with a computer program, much easier.

001	002	003	004	005	006	007	008	009	010	014	015	016
022	025	027	028	034	038	041	044	046	047	050	052	053
059	060	061	062	063	066	067	069	070	071	074	076	901
091	095	099	200	240	280	380	400	530	660	700	720	730
Some examples of the three-digit classification system designed by Thomas Barthel and later supplemented and expanded.

The characters appear differently often. According to Barthel, the “geometric” signs (which can possibly be traced back to models in nature) have the highest proportion with 65%. The bird man is also very common in different variations.

Material and workmanship

Enlargement from the Santigo stick shows the processing

Although individual symbols are also represented as petroglyphs , e.g. For example, in the Ana O Keke cave , the so-called “virgin cave ”, written documents are mainly laid down on wooden boards. They consist of different types of wood. An electron microscopic examination revealed that seven tablets and the inscribed Rei-Miro (specimen L or RR21) were made from the wood of the portia tree ( Thespesia populnea ), Polynesian miro , rapanui mako'i . The miro was a tree of particular ritual importance in Polynesia. On the Gambier Islands and the Society Islands it was planted in the sacred areas of the ceremonial platforms and the wood was used to make images of gods ( toro ) and stakes to display the offerings. It is believed that the plant came to Easter Island with the first settlers and was cultivated there.

Other panels are made from the wood of the Toromiro , a tree or shrub endemic to Easter Island that has since become extinct in the wild. In some cases, driftwood from trees not native to Easter Island was also processed.

The signs, on average 1 cm high, were incised with obsidian splinters and / or shark teeth. The outline of the figure was scratched in a fine hairline, the inside left standing.

Attempts at deciphering

The missionaries who worked on Easter Island in the second half of the 19th century made the first attempt at deciphering. They tried to connect individual tablets with genealogies that the islanders gave them. At least they recognized that each character had its own name.

The first serious attempt was made by the Bishop of Tahiti, Florentin Etienne "Tepano" Jaussen, in the 1860s. He knew a Tahitian plantation worker from Easter Island named Metoro-touara who claimed to be able to read the script. Although Metoro showed how the Bustrophedon system worked, so he seemed to be familiar with the system, his transcriptions were comparable to "a schoolboy trying to explain a university textbook." One translation read, for example: He is riddled with holes. He is the king. The man is sleeping against the blooming fruit. In several attempts on the same blackboard, he recited different texts each time.

During his visit to Easter Island in 1886, the American William Thomson brought photos of various tablets with him, which he presented to an old man by the name of Ure Vaeiko. Its “readings” were translated into English by the manager of the sheep farm on the island, Alexander Salmon. Thomson himself described them as flawed, modern research classifies them as hardly usable.

Serious scientific attempts at deciphering were only made in the 20th century. In the 1930s and 40s , the ethnologist Alfred Métraux dealt with Easter Island script. He came to the realization that the symbols had only mnemonic and no phonetic function, so it would not be possible to read and translate them word for word.

In 1943, the Russian ethnographer Kudrjawzew was able to identify text parallels on various boards for the first time. In 1956, the ethnologists Nikolai Butinov and Juri Knorosov suggested that the small Santiago tablet (copy G or RR8) contained genealogies in which rulers or their ancestors were listed with the title, name, father's name and a suffix .

The basic work for deciphering the Easter Island script by the German ethnologist Thomas Barthel listed all known objects with inscriptions for the first time. It contains a graphic preparation of the texts, classifies and catalogs the characters and contains approaches for interpretation.

The French oceanist Jean Guiart took up the thoughts of Butinov and Knorosov and interpreted the contents of the tablets as genealogies of rulers, i. H. a sequence of personal names and places associated with these persons as a position within an ancestral line. The purpose is to derive your own ambitions for power and to justify territorial claims.

Barthel had already suggested in 1958 that the Mamari table (copy C or RR2) contained a lunar calendar , as lines 6 to 9 on the front show a striking number of astronomical signs and moon symbols. The French Jacques Guy confirmed this in a comparison of the symbols with astronomical data and knowledge that Thomson had gained on Easter Island in 1886. He came to the conclusion that the table does not represent a calendar in the strict sense, but contains understandable astronomical information that is linked to myths .

In 1995 the American Steven Fischer published the idea that the signs of the Santiago staff (copy I or RR10) reproduced an orally transmitted text called “Atua mata riri”, a recitation that Thomson recorded in 1886 after an oral reproduction by an islander would have. Singing is a creation myth that explains the origin of various plants, animals and objects. The verses are of a standardized, repetitive form, in such a way that X (a deity or mythical ancestor) copulates with Y and Z emerges from it. Fischer had recognized that the Santiagostab was the only written testimony of Easter Island to contain groups of characters, each grouped by a vertical line and separated from other groups. This is always three characters or a multiple of the number three. Each of these groups contains a sign that he claims to have identified as a phallic symbol . If Fischer's theory is correct, we are in a position to interpret the content of a written testimony, but we are still a long way from being able to read Easter Island script in the form of complete sentences with all grammatical particles (if that is ever possible at all becomes).

So far little attention has been paid to the studies by Russian scientists who examined the two St. Petersburg tablets kept in the former Soviet Union, which the ethnologist Nikolai Nikolayevich Miklucho-Maklai had received from Bishop Jaussen in 1871. The ethnologist A. Piotrowski, Sergei V. Ryabchikov and the linguist Konstantin Pozdniakov from the University of St. Petersburg should be mentioned here .

Age of the tablets

The age of the tablets can hardly be determined so far, as there is no data on their manufacture. What is known is only the time at which they came into European hands. That was in the second half of the 19th century at the earliest. In the reports of the early explorers Roggeveen , La Pérouse , James Cook et al. a. there is no reference to any written evidence.

From this fact, some scholars concluded that the Rongorongo script was a mere imitation of the European script that the islanders came into contact with when the Spanish visited in 1770. The Spaniards had drawn up a written document in which the Ariki should recognize Spanish sovereignty. The chiefs signed it with characters vaguely resembling the Rongorongo script. The anthropologist Kenneth P. Emory of the Bernice P. Bishop Museum in Honolulu , in particular , took this view and believed that the glyphs were engraved with metal tools of European origin. This probably also applies to one object, the Honolulu panel III (specimen V or RR 13). However, if Emory's thesis were correct, the writing system would have developed and spread in a period of less than a century and had been completely forgotten so that no one could decipher it, a development that is very unlikely for such a short period of time. In addition, Emory does not provide a conclusive explanation for the use of the bustrophedon reading, which is used in only a few ancient and no modern scripts.

Conclusions about the age of the script can be drawn from the use of symbols that depict plants that do not exist or no longer exist on Easter Island. Sign 067, for example, shows a honey palm (of the genus Jubaea ) that was extinct when the first Europeans arrived on the island. Sign 034 shows the breadfruit tree , a plant that was never native to Easter Island. Knowledge of this can only come from the first settlers and must have been passed on from generation to generation.

So far there has only been a single radiocarbon dating of a labeled object from Easter Island. In 2003, the French botanist Catherine Orliac examined a tiny chip (20 milligrams) from the outer layer of the Little Petersburg tablet . She came to an age of 80 ± 40 years. However, the tablet was already collected by Miklucho-Maklai in 1871. Orliac himself admits that dating is problematic.

Possible precursors and parallels

Easter Island is located in the far east of the Polynesian Triangle and was one of the last islands to be settled. Because of the remote location, the culture probably developed in isolation, ie there was no exchange with other cultures. It is therefore all the more astonishing that the only font in the entire South Pacific was created on this small, resource-poor island. This development step did not take place as a recent creation in "empty space", but is based on consensus .

Almost all cultures of Oceania were familiar with systems of signs that were laid down as tattoos , petroglyphs , carvings, rock paintings or on tapa bark fiber . In many areas of the South Seas, there were picture scripts in the way that real objects were depicted to document events. Such pictographic “writings” have been found on Palau , in some regions of New Guinea and on the Carolines , for example . The natives of Australia carved drawings or ornaments into polished wooden or stone tablets ( Tjurunga ), which were then colored with a fat-ocher paste. Each pattern had a special meaning. When the chants were recited, these signs were traced with the finger, this had a ritual meaning on the one hand, to strengthen the magic, but also served as a memory aid.

On the Marquesas Islands there were knotted cords ( mata ) as mnemonic aids for the recitation of chants and genealogies. The Maori of New Zealand had notched boards or sticks ( rakau whakapapa ) as a reminder to enumerate rulers' genealogies .

According to the legend, the writing is not an original development of Easter Island, but Hotu Matua , the mythical ancestor of the Rapanui, supposedly brought 67 tablets with him from the old homeland " Hiva ".

In 1885, the French sinologist Albert Étienne Jean-Baptiste Terrien de Lacouperie noticed similarities between characters on the seals of Mohenjo-Daro ( Indus script ) and glyphs of the Rongorongo script. As the Indian historian NM Billimoria claimed, the transfer of scriptures is said to have come about through trade trips of the Panis or Vaniks, a legendary people mentioned in the Rigveda . Certain basic characters with natural models (e.g. fish, St. Andrew's cross, vulva, crescent moon) are undoubtedly similar, but there are no parallels in many other characters. Between the end of the Harappa culture , around 1,800 BC. BC, and the settlement of Easter Island, at the earliest AD 400, are around 2,000 years. In addition, there is no archaeological evidence for trade journeys of the Indus cultures over such extensive sea routes, almost 20,000 km. The theory was picked up by several other linguists and ethnologists and was very popular until the 1930s, but is not pursued any further today.

Corpus Inscriptionum Paschalis Insulae

Today's total inventory of the Easter Island scriptures (Corpus Inscriptionum Paschalis Insulae) surely only includes a fraction of what was written before the arrival of the missionaries. In a letter to his superiors, Father Eugène Eyraud, the first missionary to reach Easter Island in 1864, said that there were tablets in "all houses" (presumably the paenga houses of the elite):

“In all of their houses one can find wooden tablets or sticks covered with various hieroglyphic symbols. They are figures of animals that don't even exist on the island. The natives scratch them with the help of sharp stones. Each figure has its own name, but in view of the little fuss one makes of the tablets, I am inclined to assume that these signs - the remainder of a primitive script - represent for the modern day just a custom that is preserved without following one's Sense to ask. The natives can neither read nor write ... "

The tablets were systematically tracked down by the missionaries, collected and mostly burned as “devilish work”. Only a few written documents remain. Curiously, one of the most avid collectors and custodians was the Bishop of Tahiti , Florentin Etienne "Tepano" Jaussen. Today only 25 authentic documents from Easter Island remain:

Copy A or RR1 (Tahua)

It is one of the tablets that belonged to Bishop Jaussen. It was collected in 1868 by Father Hippolyte Roussel on Easter Island, who sent it to Tahiti. After the death of Bishop Jaussen, the tablet came to the motherhouse of the Congregazione dei Sacri Cuori in Braine-le-Comte , Belgium. It is now kept in the Order's Archives on Via Rivarone in Rome .

The material does not come from Easter Island, but is part of a rudder blade of European origin made of oak , probably driftwood. The well-preserved board is written on both sides with 8 lines on each side, a total of 1825 characters.

Width: 91.4 cm, height: 11.5 cm.

Copy B or RR4 (Aruku, older name: Aroukouru-Kurenga)

As can be seen from the records of Bishop Jaussen, the tablet is supposedly named after its carver “Aroukouru Kourenga”, who is said to have died during the raids of the Peruvian slave traders (1862–1863). It was sent by Father Hippolyte Roussell to Bishop Jaussen in Tahiti. The well-preserved specimen also belonged to the inventory of the religious house in Braine-le-Comte and was first shown to the public on the occasion of the Paris World Exhibition in 1900 . It has been kept in Rome since 1958.

The table is made of the wood of the portia tree (Thespesia populnea) . It is double-sided with 10 lines on side A and 12 lines on side B, a total of 1290 characters.

Width: 41.0 cm, height: 15.2 cm.

Copy C or RR2 (Mamari)

This panel should also bear the name of its carver. It is associated with a legend according to which it is part of the inventory of 67 tablets that Hotu Matua brought to the island. It is said to have been in the possession of the famous Ariki Ngaara of the powerful Miru clan, but was stolen from them and sold to the missionaries. The specimen, one of the best preserved, was in the possession of Bishop Jaussen from 1868 to 1892, then came to Braine-le-Comte and is now kept in Rome.

The table is made of the wood of the portia tree (Thespesia populnea) . It is described on both sides with 14 lines on each side, a total of 1000 characters.

Width: 29.0 cm, height: 19.5 cm.

Bartel already suspected a lunar calendar, as lines 6 to 9 of page A show a striking number of astronomical signs and moon symbols. This view is now widely shared by other researchers.

Copy D or RR3 (Echancrée)

Due to its poor state of preservation, specimen D is generally referred to as “tablet échancrée” (from the French échancrer = to cut out). The board is now just a fragment, comprising 6 lines on page A and 7 lines on page B with a total of approx. 270 characters, of which only 182 can be fully recognized. It was brought to Tahiti by Father Zumbohm in 1868 and given to Bishop Jaussen. It was the first Rongorongo tablet that came into European hands. What is very unusual is that the piece was once tightly wrapped with a 16 m long string of human hair, probably a fishing line that left deep notches. This piece, too, is now in the possession of the Congregazione dei SS Cuori in Rome, but was loaned to the Musée de Tahiti et des Îles in Tahiti (as of 2011).

According to Barthel, the wood comes from the stone pulp (Podocarpus latifolius) . How the wood of the tree, which is native to South Africa, got to Easter Island is not known, Fischer suspects, as a piece of a boat plank from a European ship.

Width: 30.0 cm, height: 15.0 cm.

Copy E or RR6 (Keiti)

The name "Keiti" for this specimen is supposed to reflect the name of the carver. This tablet also came into the possession of Bishop Jaussen from Father Roussell. In 1888 it came to Paris, from 1889 onwards it was in Braine-le-Comte and in 1894 it was given to the university library in Leuven, Belgium . In the destruction of the city and the university in the First World War by German troops in 1914 burned the original. Today only photos, rubbings and casts remain.

The type of wood is unknown. The board was written on both sides, with 9 lines on the A side and 8 lines on side B, 880 characters in total.

Width: 39.0 cm, height: 13.0 cm (approximate dimensions).

Copy F or RR7 (Chauvet fragment)

Copy F or RR7 (Chauvet fragment, A-side)

The badly preserved, heavily weathered specimen is a fragment of a larger tablet and was most likely kept in a hidden cave. As can be seen from a glued, handwritten note from 1892, it was originally in the possession of Bishop Jaussen and after his death came to the Picpus Fathers in Paris. With some other pieces, the panel was probably given to the French ethnologist Stéphen-Chauvet (actually: Stéphen-Charles Chauvet) in 1932. He had a Japanese woodcarver make a glass box to secure the fragment. Today it is privately owned.

The board is written on both sides and comprises at least 50 characters, 35 characters on the A side and at least 15 characters on the B side. The craftsmanship of the glyphs is rather awkward compared to other Rongorongo tablets. Some of the characters on the B-side are badly weathered and covered by the paper sticker mentioned. The material has not yet been investigated.

Width: 11.5 cm, height: 8.0 cm.

Copy G or RR8 (small Santiago plaque)

Missionaries found the plaque in 1868 in a house of the Orongo cult site (a “priest house” as they write). In 1870 it came to Santiago de Chile with the Chilean corvette O'Higgins and has since been kept in the Museo Nacional de Historia Natural.

The excellently preserved copy is described with 8 lines on both sides, 720 characters in total.

Width: 32 cm, height: 12.1 cm.

Copy H or RR9 (large Santiago plaque)

This panel, too - together with copy G - came to Santiago de Chile with the Chilean corvette O'Higgins in 1870 and has since been kept in the Museo Nacional de Historia Natural de Chile . The shape of the piece is slightly curved and follows the natural curvature of the original material, a section of the trunk of the portia tree. The A-side is well preserved, side B partially broken off and burned in one place. Apparently it was used as a fire plow .

In some passages the text agrees with that of panels P and Q, according to Barthel and Fischer it is a "long song cycle". The tablet originally had probably 1770 characters, of which 1580 can still be identified today. Both sides are described with 12 lines each.

Width: 44.5 cm, height: 11.6 cm.

Copy I or RR10 (Santiagostab)

Santiago staff, detail

The Santigostab is the most extensive and probably also the most important written testimony on Easter Island. It is a 125 cm long wooden stick with a diameter between 5.7 and 6.4 cm. The rod is not evenly thick, but widens at one end like a club. The surface of the cylinder is covered with 13 lines of text, at the thicker end there is an incomplete 14th line. The 2320 characters in total are expertly engraved. It is the most beautiful work that has survived. In contrast to all other written documents, the character strings are divided into groups of three or a multiple of the number three and separated by vertical bars.

The administrator of the island, the Frenchman Dutroux-Bornier, handed over the baton to Captain Gana of the Chilean corvette O'Higgins in 1870 . It ended up in Santiago and is now in the Museo Nacional de Historia Natural de Chile.

It is probably not a hand-to-hand combat weapon, as is sometimes to be read, but a ceremonial staff for a high-ranking personality. According to Steven-Chauvet, the material comes from Toromiro.

The linguist Konstantin Pozdniakov notes that some text passages of the staff agree with those of copies G (Small Santiago tablet) and T (Honolulu tablet I).

Copy J or RR20 (Rei-Miro London I)

Copy J, a wooden breast ornament ( Rei-Miro ), comes from the Comrie private collection and was donated to the British Museum in London in 1870 . It is not known who collected the pectoral on Easter Island and when. Allegedly, a sailor on a ship that visited Easter Island found the play Dr. Comrie offered. Only two British ships are eligible: HMS Topaze in November 1868 and HMS Canticleer in late 1870.

The crescent-shaped curved board is 73 cm long with a largest diameter of 13.2 cm. Bearded heads are carved on both ends.

In the middle of the "crescent", directly below the two holes for the lanyard, there are only two glyphs:

The last of the two signs could represent an Ao ceremonial paddle for high dignitaries.

Copy K or RR 19 (London plate)

The origin of this specimen is unclear. According to the museum records, it came to the British Museum in 1903 as a personal gift from F. Godsell, where it is still located today. Godsell had inherited the tablet from his father. It is not known where it ultimately came from.

Both pages are written with three complete lines and two incomplete marginal lines, a total of approx. 150 characters. Originally there were 290 script elements.

The characters are made more roughly than those of the Santiago staff, for example. The text agrees with the back of the small Santiago tablet (copy G or RR8), but not as an exact reproduction, but as an independent paraphrase . In contrast to Métraux, who thought the tablet was a late copy, Barthel had no doubts about its authenticity.

Barthel suspected that the wood of the Toromiro was the starting material. However, a modern microscopic analysis shows that it consists of the wood of the portia tree (Thespesia populnea) , which also speaks for its authenticity, since no trees of this type and size were seen on Easter Island by European visitors in the 18th century.

Width: 22.0 cm, height: 6.8 cm.

Copy L or RR 21 (Rei-Miro London II)

Rei-Miro London II

With a width of 41.2 cm and a maximum height of 10.5 cm, this breast ornament is slightly smaller than copy J, but in excellent condition. The origin is unclear. It comes from Christy's private collection and has been in the British Museum since 1883.

A label with 48 characters runs along the lower edge of the pectoral . The relative frequency of the vulva motif is striking . Katherine Routledge shows a photo of Copy L in her book, noting that it is a breast ornament worn by women.

The Rei-Miro consists of the wood of the portia tree (Thespesia populnea) .

Copy M or RR24 (large Wientafel)

The purchase of the tablet, like the copies N and O, can be traced back to the South Seas expedition of the gunboat SMS Hyäne in 1882 under Lieutenant Wilhelm Geiseler. One of the proponents and supporters of the research trip was the Hamburg merchant and consul in Valparaíso Heinrich Schlubach . Schlubach's wife Margaret was born Brander. The company of the Scottish Brander / Salmon family owned Easter Island from 1866 to 1888 and ran a sheep farm there. Alexander Salmon, the manager of the farm, gave the three Rongorongo tablets in his possession as a gift for Schlubach to Captain Geiseler. Schlubach later sold copies M and N to the Klee & Kocher company in Hamburg, which sold them to the Austrian Vice Consul Heinrich Freiherr von Westenholz. In 1886, Westenholz donated it to the Museum für Völkerkunde Vienna .

The heavily damaged specimen made from the wood of the portia tree (Thespesia populnea) only bears remains of characters. The number of recognizable glyphs is specified differently with 50 to 61 elements.

Width: 28.4 cm, height: 13.7 cm.

Copy N or RR23 (Kleine Wientafel)

The origin corresponds to that of specimen M, the large Wientafel. It was also donated by Westenholz to the Museum of Ethnology in Vienna in 1886. This panel is also damaged, burned in places and splintered at one end.

The number of recognizable characters is specified differently, between 173 and 230 elements. The board is written on 5 lines on both sides.

According to Pozdniakov, the text of the Kleine Wientafel forms part of the text content of the B-side of copy E (panel Keiti).

According to Barthel, the wood comes either from the portia tree (Thespesia populnea) or from the stone pine (Podocarpus latifolius) .

Width: 25.5 cm, height: 5.2 cm.

Copy O or RR22 (Berlintafel)

The origin corresponds to that of specimens M and N, the two Wientafeln. It was handed over by Lieutenant Wilhelm Geiseler from SMS Hyäne to the German consul in Valparaíso, Heinrich Schlubach, who donated it to the Royal Museum of Ethnology in Berlin in 1883 .

The copy O is next to the Santiagostab the largest surviving written testimony from Easter Island: width 103 cm, height 12.5 cm (maximum). The slightly curved, heavily damaged piece was probably originally driftwood of unknown provenance and is badly weathered. In addition, fire damage is visible in various places. Side B is completely destroyed, no more characters can be deciphered. On the A side there are still seven lines (out of probably ten originally) with 137 elements.

The board is now in the Museum für Völkerkunde Berlin-Dahlem .

Copy P or RR18 (large Petersburgtafel)

When the Russian corvette Vitjas was in Tahiti in 1871 during the Russian expedition to the South Seas, the anthropologist Nikolai Nikolajewitsch Miklucho-Maklai received the Rongorongo tablet from Bishop Jaussen. Shortly before his death, Miklucho-Maklai bequeathed his ethnological collection, including the two Rongorongo tablets P and Q, to the Russian Geographical Society . In 1891 they came into the holdings of the Ethnological Museum in St. Petersburg , where they have been kept ever since.

Each page is described with 11 lines, a total of 1540 characters. According to Barthel, the material is Toromiro wood, but a new microscopic examination showed that the panel is actually made from the wood of the stone slab (Podocarpus latifolius) . According to its shape, it could have been part of a rudder blade of European origin. But since it has several perforations, probably for cords, it is also possible that the piece was used as part of a canoe.

Width: 63 cm, height: 15 cm (max.).

Copy Q or RR17 (Kleine Petersburgtafel)

Like copy P, the small St.Petersburg tablet comes from the estate of Miklucho-Maklai. She came with the expedition of Vityaz to Russia. It is not entirely clear where it originally came from. Miklucho-Maklai acquired them either in Tahiti or in Mangareva . Today it is also part of the holdings of the Ethnological Museum in St. Petersburg.

The strongly curved panel, probably made from a curved piece of branch, consists of the wood of the portia tree (Thespesia populnea) . It is described on the A and B sides with 9 lines that can still be seen today. Many lines of the heavily weathered tablet are incomplete, so that around 900 of the original 1200 writing elements can still be identified. The text shows parallels with the text in panels H and P in several sequences.

Width: 44.0 cm, height: 9.0 cm.

Copy R or RR15 (small Washington plaque)

In December 1886 the USS Mohican , a steamship of the US Pacific Squadron, visited Easter Island on a research assignment from the Smithsonian Institution. Above all, the ship's paymaster William Thomson and the ship's doctor George Cooke explored the island. Thomson succeeded with considerable difficulty, as he states, in acquiring two Rongorongo tablets: copies R and S. In 1890, Thomson gave the two tablets to the Smithsonian Institution . They are now in the National Museum of Natural History in Washington, DC

The slightly curved panel R is damaged on the edges, broken off at one end, but otherwise in good condition. The material is unknown, Thomson assumed that it was Toromiro wood. Side A is described with 8 lines, side B with 9 lines, of which only 8 can now be seen. The length of the text is now 460 characters from the original probably around 600. The Russian linguists Konstantin and Igor Pozdniakov have made statistical comparisons and found that text sequences from copy R appear in several other tables.

Width: 24 cm, height: 9 cm.

Copy S or RR16 (large Washington plaque)

The origin is the same as for copy R (small Washington plaque). It is now also in the National Museum of Natural History in Washington DC

A passage from Katherine Routledge's report gives information about the original owners:

“The natives told us that a writer from the south coast whose house was full of Rongorongo tablets had thrown them away at the orders of the missionaries. A practical man named Niari then took the discarded tablets and made a boat out of them, with which he caught a lot of fish. When the seams [of the pieces of wood tied together for the boat hull] came apart, he kept the wood in a cave in an Ahu near Hange Roa to later build a new boat from it. Pakarati, an islander who is still alive today [1914], found a piece that the USS Mohican later acquired. "

The shape of the panel, which is pointed on one side and provided with twelve holes all around, suggests that it was actually used as a boat plank. On the A side 8 lines are described, on the B side 9, with a total of 730 still identifiable characters from the original probably 1200.

Width: 63 cm, height: 12 cm (max.).

Copy T or RR11 (Honolulu plate I)

The private collector JL Young in Auckland allegedly acquired the three plates T, U and V in 1888 from a "reliable broker". The exact origin is unknown, but there is no doubt that they are real pieces. In 1920 she bought the Bernice P. Bishop Museum in Honolulu , where they are still located today.

Specimen T is in very poor condition. The wood is of unknown origin. One side is complete, the other largely rotten and destroyed by insect damage. In addition, both sides show signs of fire. Side A is described with 11 lines. About 140 to 150 script elements are still recognizable, originally it should have been more than 400. On side B, no characters can be identified, even with modern methods.

Thomas Barthel believed that the text was thematically related to the Santiago staff (copy I or RR 10).

Width: 31 cm, height: 12.5 cm (max.).

Copy U or RR12 (Honolulu plate II)

The origin is the same as for copies T and V. Panel U is also in the collection of the Bernice P. Bishop Museum in Honolulu. This is also a poorly preserved, largely rotten, insect-damaged specimen that has been burned in places. The ends are frayed and there is also a large knothole in the middle .

6 lines of text can still be seen on side A and 10 lines on side B. A total of only 62 writing elements can be identified around the knothole, probably from 400 to 500 originally. The characters on side A and B are different sizes, so that it is assumed that two different engravers were at work.

Width: 70.5 cm, height: 8 cm.

Copy V or RR13 (Honolulu plate III)

The origin is the same as for copies T and U. Panel V is also in the collection of the Bernice P. Bishop Museum in Honolulu.

Specimen V was probably made from the end of an oar of European origin (driftwood?). Side A is a bit chipped off at one end, side B has slight fire damage.

Only one side has recognizable writing elements, a total of 22 characters in two lines. Compared to the other panels, the characters are awkward and engraved with a steel tool. Alfred Metráux questioned the authenticity of the piece. Both Fischer and Barthel are of the opinion that although it is a "late" piece, the tablet was clearly made before the arrival of the missionaries on Easter Island.

Width: 71.8 cm, height: 9 cm.

Copy W or RR14 (Honolulu panel IV)

In 1886, Lieutenant Symonds of the USS Mohican acquired the Easter Island tablet. He later gave it to the Honolulu-based Gifford family, who donated it to the Bernice P. Bishop Museum in 1914.

Copy W is just a small fragment (width 6.7 cm, height 2.3 cm) of a larger panel. The type of wood is unknown. Only 3 characters can be identified on side A.

Copy X or RR25 (Vogelmann)

Copy X is a Vogelmann figure ( Moai Tangata Manu ) of masterful execution and in an excellent state of preservation. The 33 cm high wooden figure is the only known of its kind that is covered with characters.

The text, consisting of a total of 38 elements (some characters are difficult to recognize due to abrasion), is distributed in a total of 7 short sections of 2 to 12 characters on different parts of the body: beak, back of the head, neck, chest, lower back, abdomen and thighs. All text lines, except in the neck, are on the right half of the body.

The origin of the figure is unclear. Fischer speculates that she might have come to the United States on a whaling ship from Nantucket . The piece originally came from the Appelton Sturgis private collection and was donated to the American Museum of Natural History in New York City in the 1890s , where it is still located today.

Copy Y or RR5 (tobacco box, Paris Snuffbox or La Tabatière)

Copy Y is a wooden tobacco box made by a sailor made from fragments of a Rongorongo tablet. The original board was cut into 6 rectangular pieces, which were put together to form a box with a hinged lid. The wood comes from the portia tree (Thespesia populnea) .

The Musée de l'Homme in Paris acquired the tobacco jar in 1961 from the French American artist Henry Reichlen, who in turn had received it from a French family who had supposedly owned it for generations. Today it is exhibited in the Musée du quai Branly in Paris.

On the outside of the box, about 80 writing elements can still be seen, some only partially. There are no signs on the inside, apparently the board was planed smooth on the B-side before it was cut apart. Although the characters were probably engraved with a steel tool, neither Thomas Barthel nor Steven Fischer had any doubts as to their authenticity. In Barthel's book "Basics for Deciphering the Easter Island Script" from 1958, the tobacco box is not yet recorded.

Length: 7.1 cm, width: 4.7 cm, height: 2.8 cm (dimensions of the can).

Imitations, fakes

As early as the 19th century, word got around on Easter Island that writing tablets were very popular with visitors. As can be read, for example, from Thomson and Routledge, quite high prices were sometimes paid. Alfred Métraux praised a higher amount of money in 1934/35 for the procurement of previously unknown written documents. This resulted in numerous forgeries. There are therefore still a number of tablets in the collections that are generally viewed as doubtful or not authentic.

In particular, the so-called Poike panel (also recorded as copy Z or T4 in some publications) in the Museo Nacional de Historia Natural in Santiago de Chile should be mentioned here . The origin is unclear. Allegedly the plaque was found in 1937 by the islander José Paté in the foundations of a house on the Poike Peninsula and given to Father Sebastian Englert . Both Barthel and Fischer doubt the authenticity.

When the SMS Hyena visited Easter Island, an officer bought a Rei-Miro (now in the Australian Museum, Sydney ). Appearance and texture suggest that it is a real, older specimen. However, an unknown islander subsequently "upgraded" the breast ornament by engraving characters that are supposed to represent Rongorongo script. The characters are only roughly scratched with a steel tool. The shapes do not belong to the repertoire of the classic Easter Island script, but are undoubtedly awkward imitations.

literature

• Barthel, Thomas: Basics for deciphering the Easter Island writing. De Gruyter & Co, Hamburg 1958, ( obsolete ).
• Fischer, Steven Roger: Rongorongo. The Easter Island Script. History, traditions, texts. Clarendon Press, Oxford 1997, ISBN 0-19-823710-3 , ( Oxford studies in anthropological linguistics 14).
• Métraux, Alfred: The Easter Island. Kohlhammer, Stuttgart 1957, ( obsolete ).
• Robinson, Andrew: Lost Languages. The Enigma of The World's Undeciphered Scripts. McGraw-Hill, New York City 2002, ISBN 0-07-135743-2 , ( A Peter N. Nevraumont book ), ( A current inventory of attempts to decipher in Chapter VIII, pp. 218-243. ).
• Routledge, Katherine: The Mystery of Easter Island. Sifton, Praed & Co., London 1919, new edition: Cosimo Classics, New York NY 2007, ISBN 978-1-60206-698-4 , ( obsolete ).
• Davletshin, Albert: "Name in the Kohau Rongorongo script (Easter Island)". In: "Journal de la Société des Océanistes", Vol. 134 (2012), pp. 95-109.
• Horley, Paul: "Rongorongo tablet from the Ethnological Museum, Berlin". In: Journal de la Société des Océanistes ", Vol. 135 (2012), pp. 243-256.

Web links

Commons : Rongorongo  - collection of images, videos and audio files

Wikisource: An inscribed memorial from Easter Island by Rudolph Amandus Philippi and Adolf Bastian (1870)  - sources and full texts

• Michael Everson's preliminary proposal for encoding in Unicode (PDF; 356 kB)
• Photos and Barthel's drawings of all Rongorongo texts

Remarks

1. ↑ Robert von Heine-Geldern describes them as "connoisseurs, custodians and reciters of the traditions"
2. ↑ However, if you add the ligatures and the different types of hand shapes and variations, the number increases to around 1500 characters
3. ↑ Although recent research denies the origin of the Easter Islanders from South America, they do not want to completely rule out a possible contact between the two cultures. This contact, if it did take place at all, is likely to have been limited to one or very few occasions. See: Helene Martinsson-Wallin: Ahu - The Cermonial Stone Structures of Easter Island, Uppsala 1994
4. ↑ This is by no means intended to make the claim that there were cultural connections between Easter Island and the Aborigines of Australia. The example shows, however, that the assumption that the Rongorongo tablets are a mnemonic system is not without parallels.
5. ↑ The order is also known under the name "Picpus-Patres" after the place where it was founded in a district of Paris or in Germany as the Arnsteiner Fathers
6. ↑ The list of items Geiseler acquired on Easter Island, which he attaches to his report to the Imperial Admiralty, does not mention the three Rongorongo tablets. It can therefore be assumed that it was actually a private gift to Schlubach.
7. ↑ As James Cook reported, the canoes of Easter Island were "sewn together" from small and very small pieces of wood connected with cords. As a result of the extensive deforestation, trunks were no longer available for dugout canoes .
8. ↑ Russell Sturgis was a well-known American architect and art lover from Baltimore and one of the founders of the Metropolitan Museum of Art . His son Appelton Sturgis continued the tradition as an art collector.

Individual evidence

1. ↑ John Flenley, Paul Bahn: The Enigmas of Easter Iceland , Oxford University Press, Oxford and New York 2003, ISBN 0-19-280340-9 , p 186
2. ↑ Sebastian Englert: La Tierra de Hotu Matu'a , Santiago de Chile 1948, quoted from: Thor Heyerdahl: Die Kunst der Osterinsel , Munich-Gütersloh-Vienna, 1975, p. 233
3. ↑ Thomas Barthel: Basics for deciphering the Easter Island script , Hamburg 1958
4. ↑ after Barthel (1958), pp. 40-41.
5. ↑ Catherine Orliac: The rongorongo tablets from Easter Island - botanical identification and 14c dating, in Archeology in Oceania, October 2005, pp. 115-120
6. ↑ Catherine Orliac: Le dieu Rao de Mangareva et le Curcuma longa , in Journal de la Société des Océanistes 2002, No. 114-5, pp. 201-207
7. ^ Arne Skjølsvold : Archaeological investigation at Anakena, Easter Island . The Kon-Tiki Museum Occasional Papers, vol 3. 1995, Oslo
8. ↑ John Flenley and Paul Bahn 2003, p. 187
9. ↑ It is riddled with holes - Robongo translations have so far made no sense , Süddeutsche Zeitung, September 13, 2017, p. 14, left column
10. ↑ Werner Wolff: The Mystery of Easter Island Script , Columbia University New York 1945, In: The Journal of the Polynesian Society , Vol. 54, No. 1 ( online )
11. ↑ Nikolai Butinov: Personal Names of the Easter Island Tablets, In Journal of the Austronesiean Studies vol. 2, 1960, pp. 3-7
12. ↑ Jean Guiard: The characters of Easter Island , in 1500 years of Easter Island culture - treasures from the land of Hotu Matua. Catalog for the exhibition organized by the German-Ibero-American Society Frankfurt a. M. from April 5 to September 3, 1989, Mainz 1989, ISBN 3-8053-1064-1 , p. 137
13. ^ Jacques Guy: On the Lunar Calendar of Tablet Mamari, in: Journal de la Société des Océanistes, Issue 2, Paris 1991, pp. 135-149.
14. ↑ Steven R. Fischer: Preliminary evidence for cosmogonic texts in rapanui's rongorongo inscriptions, in: Journal of the Polynesian Society, vol 104, pp. 303-321, Wellington 1995
15. ↑ Catherine Orliac 2005, pp. 118-119
16. ^ Richard Andree: Bilderschriften aus der Südsee, in: Globus Geografische Zeitschrift, Volume 40, 1881, pp. 375–376
17. ↑ : NM Billimoria The Script of Mohenjodaro and Easter Iceland in the Journal of the Polynesian Society ff, Vol 50, Wellington 1941, p. 44.
18. ^ Katherine Routledge : The Mystery of Easter Island . London 1919, p. 207
19. ↑ Steven Roger Fischer: Rongorongo, the Easter Island script , Oxford University Press 1997 (2007 edition), p. 410
20. ↑ Katherine Routledge 1919, p. 249
21. ↑ for example Jacques Guy (1991) and Steven Fischer (1997)
22. ^ Heide-Margaret Esen-Baur: 1500 years of culture on Easter Island - treasures from the land of Hotu Matua . Catalog for the exhibition organized by the German-Ibero-American Society Frankfurt a. M. from April 5 to September 3, 1989, Mainz 1989, p. 235
23. ↑ Heide-Margaret Esen-Baur 1989, p. 235
24. ↑ Thomes Barthel 1958, p. 23
25. ↑ Konstantin Pozdniakov: Les Bases du Déchiffrement de l'Écriture de l'Ile de Pâques , in: Journal de la Société des Océanistes, No. 103, Paris 1996, pp. 289-303 ( PDF ( Memento des original from June 25 2008 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and not yet checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. ) 
26. ↑ Figure: Wooden tablet with rongorongo inscription
27. ↑ Thomas Barthel 1958, p. 25
28. ↑ Catherine Orliac 2005, pp. 116-117
29. ↑ Katherine Routledge 1919, p. 269, Fig. 115
30. ↑ Konstantin Pozdniakov: Les Bases du Déchiffrement de l'Écriture de l'Ile de Pâques in Journal de la Societé des Océanistes No. 103, Paris 1996, pp. 289-303.
31. ↑ Thomas Barthel 1958, p. 27
32. ↑ Catherine Orliac: Botanical Identification of the Wood of the Large Kohau Rongorongo tablet of St Petersburg , in: Rapa Nui Journal, No. 21, May 2007, pp. 7-10
33. ↑ Konstantin and Igor Pozdniakov: Rapanui Writing and the Rapanui Language: Preliminary Results of a Statistical Analysis , in: Forum for Anthropology & Culture No. 3, 2006, pp. 89–123
34. ^ Katherine Routledge 1919, p. 207
35. ↑ Barthel 1958, p. 31
36. ↑ See the chapter “Forged Objects” in Thomas Barthel (1958), pp. 33–35.