Putative duplication glyph in the rongorongo script

ABSTRACT

This article discusses a possible identification of a duplication marker in the rongorongo script. Several structural observations as well as statistical analysis point to “split circles” glyph as a likely bearer of reduplication functions. This notion springs from internal analysis of the genealogy portion in the Small Santiago Tablet as well as syntax patterns exhibited by “split circles” in other inscriptions. As a result of the analysis performed in this work, several semantically constrained meanings for “split circles” glyphs are proposed. All of them relate to the doubling character of “split circles.” If the identification is correct, it might be an advancement in our understanding of the rongorongo script and could allow for further progress in the decipherment.

KEYWORDS:

• Easter Island
• parallel passages
• reduplication
• rongorongo
• undeciphered scripts

About the author

Rafal Wieczorek is an Assistant Professor at the University of Warsaw. He holds a PhD from Roma Tre University and had previously worked at the University of Southern Denmark and at Harvard University. He is keenly interested in Easter Island archaeology, particularly in the as of yet undeciphered rongorongo script.

Acknowledgments

The author is very much obliged to Paul Horley for permission to use his unpublished drawings of rongorongo inscriptions. Special thanks also to Philip Spaelti for setting up the website kohaumotu.org, which proved to be very useful during the writing of this article. Thanks are also directed to Albert Davletshin (Russian State University for the Humanities, Moscow) and Martyn Harris (Birkbeck University, London) for permission to use photographs of the original rongorongo artefacts. A special thank you is given to Philippe Peltier from Musée du quai Branly, Paris, for the opportunity to work with casts of rongorongo tablets, and to Jill Hasell from British Museum, London, for the opportunity to work with original rongorongo artefacts. Lastly, I thank Rachele Faiella, Paul Horley, Tomi Melka, Albert Davletshin, and Jenya Korovina for openly sharing with me their ideas and thoughts on rongorongo.

Notes

¹Jaussen’s list was an attempt carried out in the 1870s by the then Bishop of Tahiti, Tepano Jaussen, to collect knowledge from the Rapanui people on the meaning of particular glyphs and texts. Although the translations obtained by Bishop Jaussen are not considered reliable, the native interpretation of sign depictions might contain some clues as to their meanings (Fischer 1997, 54–6; Guy 1999).

²The glyph tracings published by Barthel where actually made by Barthel’s assistant Bodo Spranz (Barthel 1958, vii; Fischer 1997, 403).

³This happened also to the previous damaged part, visible in Figure 5d. There, a partially damaged glyph in Pr2 has been filled by Barthel as “sprout” (Figure 5c), but the parallel fragments from Qr2 and Hr2 show in this place glyph “shark” (Figure 5a). This replacement of “shark” by “sprout” has led one author (De Laat 2009, 27–8) to assume allography between those two forms and to read both glyphs, the seldom “shark” and very frequent “sprout,” syllabically as mo, derived acrophonicaly from the word mongo, alleged Old Rapanui word for shark (Churchill 1912, 229). As can be seen in Figure 5, this confusion stems from a single mistake made by Barthel (and repeated by Fischer [1997, 479]) in tracing line Pr2. The situation illustrates one more time how important it is to possess accurate starting material in the decipherment endeavour.

⁴The system of glyphic transliteration is borrowed from Maya studies standards (Kettunen and Helmke 2010, 14). Logographic signs are printed in boldface capitals and syllabic signs in boldface lowercase letters. Parenthesis highlights the presumable nature of proposed phonetic readings.

⁵This practice was changed by the reform in favour of more laborious spelling of the entire reduplicated word. However, with the advent of electronic forms of communication, where time and space are important constraints, the shorter spelling practice is again widely used (Gil 2005).

⁶It should be stressed once more that we are dealing here only with an intellectual exercise on how such a pattern could be interpreted with the help of an example and in order to illustrate the principle of phonetic complementation. It is not in any way a decipherment proposition. The real meanings of signs “turtle” and “stick” are at present unknown.