Rongorongo text B
Encyclopedia
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Rongorongo
Rongorongo is a system of glyphs discovered in the 19th century on Easter Island that appears to be writing or proto-writing. It cannot be read despite numerous attempts at decipherment. Although some calendrical and what might prove to be genealogical information has been identified, not even...
corpus, also known as Aruku Kurenga, is one of two dozen surviving rongorongo texts.
Aruku Kurenga provided part of the "Jaussen List", a failed key of rongorongo glyphs. Jaussen
Florentin-Étienne Jaussen
Monsignor Florentin-Étienne Jaussen was the first bishop of Tahiti and the man who brought the rongorongo script of Easter Island to the world's attention. In the 1860s Bishop Jaussen was responsible for ending the slave raids on Easter Island.Jaussen was born in Rocles, France...
's informant, Metoro Tau‘a Ure, 'read' the tablet correctly from the bottom left of the recto, but the transcription of his reading has been of no use in understanding the script.
Other names
B is the standard designation, from BarthelThomas Barthel
Thomas Sylvester Barthel was a German ethnologist and epigrapher who is best known for cataloguing the undeciphered rongorongo script of Easter Island....
(1958). Fischer (1997) refers to it as RR4.
Location
General archives of the Padri dei Sacri CuoriCongregation of the Sacred Hearts of Jesus and Mary
The Congregation of the Sacred Hearts of Jesus and Mary and of the Perpetual Adoration of the Most Holy Sacrament of the Altar is a Roman Catholic religious order of brothers, priests, and nuns...
(SSCC), Casa Generalizia, Via Rivarone 85, I-00166 Rome, Italy.
Reproductions are located at the SSCC, the Bishop Museum
Bishop Museum
The Bishop Museum , is a museum of history and science in the historic Kalihi district of Honolulu on the Hawaiian island of O'ahu...
, Honolulu, the Cinquantenaire
Cinquantenaire
Parc du Cinquantenaire or Jubelpark is a large public, urban park in the easternmost part of the European Quarter in Brussels, Belgium....
, Brussels, and the Dresden Museum of Ethnology.
Physical description
In excellent condition. Oblong, fluted, with rounded edges and one end narrowed with an indentation, 41 × 15.2 × 2.3 cm, made of Pacific rosewood (Orliac 2005). Aruku Kurenga is warped, and may have been made from a piece of driftwood. There is one hole in the center, and two on the top and right end, viewing the verso, for hanging the tablet.Métraux (1940: 393-4) considered Aruku Kurenga to be one of the finest rongorongo tablets:
- The skill displayed by the artist is masterly; all the signs are incised with a freedom, a keen appreciation of proportion, and a vigor that only an expert artist could accomplish. There is a good sense of movement and a harmonious combination of conventionalized and naturalistic elements.
Provenance
One of Jaussen'sFlorentin-Étienne Jaussen
Monsignor Florentin-Étienne Jaussen was the first bishop of Tahiti and the man who brought the rongorongo script of Easter Island to the world's attention. In the 1860s Bishop Jaussen was responsible for ending the slave raids on Easter Island.Jaussen was born in Rocles, France...
tablets, Aruku Kurenga was apparently collected on Easter Island
Easter Island
Easter Island is a Polynesian island in the southeastern Pacific Ocean, at the southeasternmost point of the Polynesian triangle. A special territory of Chile that was annexed in 1888, Easter Island is famous for its 887 extant monumental statues, called moai, created by the early Rapanui people...
by Fathers Roussel
Hippolyte Roussel
Hippolyte Roussel was a French priest and missionary to Polynesia, a member of the Congregation of the Sacred Hearts of Jesus and Mary.In 1854 he was sent to evangelize in the Tuamotus and Mangareva in the Gambier Islands...
and Zumbohm in 1870 and sent to him in Tahiti. It was sent to the headquarters of the Congrégation des Sacrés-Coeurs et de l'Adoration (SSCC) in Paris, where it was deposited in the Missionary Museum, either by Jaussen in 1888 or by the French navy in 1892 after his death. In 1905 it was moved to the SSCC museum in Braine-le-Comte
Braine-le-Comte
Braine-le-Comte is a Walloon municipality located in the Belgian province of Hainaut.On January 1, 2006, Braine-le-Comte had a total population of 20,305...
, Belgium. In 1953, when the SSCC relocated to Grottaferrata
Grottaferrata
Grottaferrata, Italy is a small town and comune in the province of Rome, situated on the lower slopes of the Alban Hills, 20 km south east of Rome. It is bounded by other communes, Frascati, Rocca di Papa, Marino, and Rome.-History:...
, near Rome, this tablet was sent to the old Paris headquarters. It was returned shortly after the SSCC moved their headquarters to Rome in 1964. In 1974 the SSCC moved to its permanent headquarters in Rome.
Contents
Fischer believes that Aruku Kurenga may be a collation of several different texts.Butinov and Knorozov (1956) noted three repeating sequences of text. "Evidently, this is one and the same text, given in three variants".
Text
There are ten lines of glyphs recto, twelve verso, for a total of ~ 1,290 glyphs.Due to the constricted shape of one end, the lines of text are not parallel. On the verso, line 2 is reduced in height after the fifth glyph, and line three stops at that point, so that the beginning of line 4 runs directly atop line 2. (See 'Verso, right end' in the gallery below.)
Note: Pozdniakov includes B in his comments on the reading order of A, suggesting that the sides of B should be assigned labels a and b rather than recto and verso.
Barthel
Fischer