Text V of the
rongorongo corpus, the Honolulu oar, also known as Honolulu tablet 3 or Honolulu 3622, may be one of two dozen surviving rongorongo texts. Its authenticity has been questioned.
Other names
V is the standard designation, from
Barthel (1958). Fischer (1997) refers to it as RR13.
Location
Bernice P. 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 larg ...
, Honolulu. Catalog
B.03622
Description
Apparently the end of a European or American oar, like
tablet A, though of unknown wood, and cut with a steel blade. It measures 71.8 × 9 × 2.8 cm and is not fluted. Side a is worm-eaten and split at its thick end; side b has fire damage.
Provenance
Collector J. L. Young of
Auckland
Auckland (pronounced ) ( mi, Tāmaki Makaurau) is a large metropolitan city in the North Island of New Zealand. The List of New Zealand urban areas by population, most populous urban area in the country and the List of cities in Oceania by po ...
purchased three of the Honolulu tablets ''circa'' 1888 "from Rapanui through a reliable agent", who Fischer thinks was probably
Alexander Salmon, Jr. It was transferred to the Bishop Museum in August 1920.
Métraux (1938) did not include V as he did not think it was authentic:
:''The signs appear to have been incised with a steel implement, and do not show the regularity and beauty of outline which characterise the original tablets.''
However, Barthel (1958:32) believed it to be authentic. Fischer is of the opinion that the burnt wood,
:''indicates that the inscription probably existed at the time that original rongorongo pieces were being annihilated by fire. More convincing evidence, however, that this is an authentic rongorongo inscription is the fact that the sequence 200.200.11-2 is shared with
5 and
8, while the sequence 200-700 is shared with
10 and
11. No post-missionary imitator could have effected this.''
However, this reasoning is not sound: juxtaposing the two common glyphs 200 man and 700 fish is hardly remarkable. The only ligature is the 200.200.11-2, whereas known authentic texts, even short ones, have numerous ligatures.
Text
Side a has two areas of text: a single 22-glyph line, with a separate pair of glyphs slightly above and 4 cm to the right of this (on the other side of the label). Fischer reports that on side b pencil rubbings reveal possible traces of an inscription at the edge of the burnt area.
;Fischer
::
::Side a, as traced by Fischer. On the tablet, the pair of glyphs is completely separate from the main line.
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.
* MÉTRAUX, Alfred. 1938. "Two Easter Island Tablets in the Bernice P. Bishop Museum". ''Man'' 38(1): 1-4. London.
External links
Barthel's coding of text V
{{Rongorongo
Rongorongo inscriptions