Text Z of the
rongorongo
Rongorongo ( or ; Rapa Nui: ) is a system of glyphs discovered in the 19th century on Easter Island that has the appearance of writing or proto-writing. Numerous attempts at decipherment have been made, but none have been successful. Although ...
corpus, also known as ''Poike,'' is a
palimpsest
In textual studies, a palimpsest () is a manuscript page, either from a scroll or a book, from which the text has been scraped or washed off in preparation for reuse in the form of another document. Parchment was made of lamb, calf, or kid ski ...
inscription that may be one of two dozen surviving rongorongo texts. The authenticity of the upper text is in question.
Other names
Z is the standard designation, continuing from
Barthel (1958). Fischer (1997) numbers it among the imitative pieces made for tourists as T4.
Location
''
Chilean National Museum of Natural History
The Chilean National Museum of Natural History ( or ) is one of three national museums in Chile, along with the Museum of Fine Arts and the National History Museum. It is located in Quinta Normal Park, and was founded in 1830 by the French natur ...
,'' Santiago. Catalog # 12060.
Description
A small light-weight piece, 10.7 × 5.8 × 2.7 cm, of unknown wood and darkened with age. One end has been beveled to a sharp edge, the other, broken off and smoothed. Side a is badly cracked. It is the smallest intact piece.
Provenance
In 1937 José Paté discovered this tablet by the foundations of the ruins of a stone house near
ahu Mahatua, the home village of Metoro Taua Ure,
Bishop Jaussen's informant, at the base of
Poike
Poike is one of the three main extinct volcanoes that form Rapa Nui (Easter Island), a Chilean island in the Pacific Ocean
The Pacific Ocean is the largest and deepest of Earth's five Borders of the oceans, oceanic divisions. It exten ...
Volcano, near the cave
Aka o Keke that contains a few crude rongorongo-type petroglyphs. Paté gave the tablet to Father Sebastian, who then donated it to the Santiago museum in 1938.
The authenticity of the piece is immediately suspect because it is not
boustrophedon
Boustrophedon () is a style of writing in which alternate lines of writing are reversed, with letters also written in reverse, mirror-style. This is in contrast to modern European languages, where lines always begin on the same side, usually the l ...
, typical of early forgeries. However, Fischer (1997) suspects that it may be a
palimpsest
In textual studies, a palimpsest () is a manuscript page, either from a scroll or a book, from which the text has been scraped or washed off in preparation for reuse in the form of another document. Parchment was made of lamb, calf, or kid ski ...
, that someone had carved an imitative inscription over an authentic but by then illegible text, and that it was somehow forgotten rather than sold. It may have also been an attempt to revive rongorongo for personal reasons.
Text
Fischer (1997) reports that in strong light four lines of imitative (crude, non-boustrophedon) script are visible on both sides, but that "in indirect light there are fainter traces of smaller rongorongo glyphs in six or seven lines on each side." The smaller hand implies a second scribe. Even the cruder glyphs are only partially legible, with some 55 "trace elements" remaining.
;Barthel
Barthel did not transcribe this text.
;Fischer
Fischer does not believe the legible text to be genuine, and was unable to transcribe the underlying text.
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.
External links
Barthel's coding of text Z
{{Rongorongo
Rongorongo inscriptions