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Text H of the rongorongo corpus, the larger of two tablets located in
Santiago Santiago (, ; ), also known as Santiago de Chile, is the capital and largest city of Chile as well as one of the largest cities in the Americas. It is the center of Chile's most densely populated region, the Santiago Metropolitan Region, whose ...
and therefore also known as the Great or Large Santiago tablet, is one of two dozen surviving rongorongo texts, and one of three recording the so-called " Grand Tradition".


Other names

H is the standard designation, from Barthel (1958). Fischer (1997) refers to it as RR9.


Location

'' Museo Nacional de Historia Natural,'' Santiago. Catalog # 5.498 (315). There are reproductions at the '' Musée de l'Homme,'' Paris
''Institut für Völkerkunde
'' Tübingen (prior to 1989);
Bishop Museum The Bernice Pauahi Bishop Museum, designated the Hawaii State Museum of Natural and Cultural History, is a museum of history and science in the historic Kalihi district of Honolulu on the Hawaiian island of Oʻahu. Founded in 1889, it is the lar ...
, Honolulu;
American Museum of Natural History The American Museum of Natural History (abbreviated as AMNH) is a natural history museum on the Upper West Side of Manhattan in New York City. In Theodore Roosevelt Park, across the street from Central Park, the museum complex comprises 26 inter ...
, New York; van Hoorebeeck Collection, Belgium; and in Steven Fischer's collection in Auckland.


Description

A fluted, delicately carved but fire-damaged tablet, 44.5 × 11.6 × 2.7 cm, of Pacific rosewood (Orliac 2005). The wood is bent, following the contours of the tree from which it was cut. The sides are beveled, perhaps to make a larger writing surface. A plugged hole at the top (recto) may have been used for hanging. On the left side of the recto, lines 8-12 have been burnt out; the damage continues onto the verso, taking out part of lines 1-2. There is a 10-cm gouge along the right of recto line 6 which Orliac (2003/2004:48-53) concluded was made by a fire stick in the making of a fire (image at right). Imbelloni (1951:99) was of the opinion that, :''This tablet is one of the most finely incised among all those that one knows; each one of its figures has a harmoniously drawn contour; the incision is not deep, nor reveals itself on the surface by a furrow that is wide, but narrow, thread-like.'' (translation by Fischer)


Provenance

In 1870 Father Roussel gave tablets G and H to Captain Gana of the Chilean corvette '' O'Higgins.'' They remained in the custody of the Chilean navy in Valparaíso until they were sent to the newly established department of archeology at the ''Museo Nacional de Historia Natural.''


Contents

The Large Santiago tablet holds a long 'chant cycle' (to use Fischer's words), versions of which is also found on the
large Large means of great size. Large may also refer to: Mathematics * Arbitrarily large, a phrase in mathematics * Large cardinal, a property of certain transfinite numbers * Large category, a category with a proper class of objects and morphisms (or ...
and
small Small may refer to: Science and technology * SMALL, an ALGOL-like programming language * Small (anatomy), the lumbar region of the back * ''Small'' (journal), a nano-science publication * <small>, an HTML element that defines smaller text ...
St Petersburg tablets (P and Q). Shorter sequences are shared with other tablets: Hr7 with Aa2, Pr3, and Qr3; Hr2 with Qr2; and Hr4 with Qr4.


Text

There are twelve lines of glyphs on each side, with some 1,580 surviving glyphs out of a pre-fire total of approximately 1,770. The reading order of the parallel texts H, P, and Q is well established. ;Barthel ;Fischer


Image gallery

Image:Rongorongo H-r Great Santiago.jpg, Recto, engraving Image:Rongorongo H-r Large Santiago (color).jpg, Recto, color, showing fire damage. The text begins upside-down in this view. Image:Rongorongo H-v Great Santiago (unretouched).jpg, Verso, glyphs traced Image:Rongorongo H-v Great Santiago.jpg, Verso, engraving


References

* BARTHEL, Thomas S. 1958. ''Grundlagen zur Entzifferung der Osterinselschrift'' (Bases for the Decipherment of the Easter Island Script). Hamburg : Cram, de Gruyter. * FISCHER, Steven Roger. 1997. ''RongoRongo, the Easter Island Script: History, Traditions, Texts.'' Oxford and N.Y.: Oxford University Press. * IMBELLONI, José. 1951. "Las Tabletas Parlantes de Pascua: Monumentos de un Sistema Gráfico Indo-oceánico." ''Runa'' 4. 89-177. * ORLIAC Catherine. 2003/2004. ''Manifestation de l'expression symbolique en Océanie : l'exemple des bois d'œuvre de l'Ile de Pâques'' (Manifestation of symbolic expression in Oceania: The example of the woodworking of Easter Island). ''Cahier V, Thème 6, Cultes, rites et religions,'' p. 48-53. * ORLIAC, Catherine. 2005. "The Rongorongo Tablets from Easter Island: Botanical Identification and 14C Dating." ''Archaeology in Oceania'' 40.3.


External links


Barthel's coding of text H
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