Rongorongo text Q
Encyclopedia
Text Q of the rongorongo
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, the smaller of two tablets in St Petersburg and therefore also known as the Small St Petersburg tablet, is one of two dozen surviving rongorongo texts, and one of three recording the so-called 'Great Tradition'.

Other names

Q is the standard designation, from Barthel
Thomas 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 RR17.

Location

Peter the Great Museum of Anthropology and Ethnography, St Petersburg. Catalog # 402/13-1.

There are reproductions in the Musée de l'Homme
Musée de l'Homme
The Musée de l'Homme was created in 1937 by Paul Rivet for the 1937 Exposition Internationale des Arts et Techniques dans la Vie Moderne. It is the descendant of the Musée d'Ethnographie du Trocadéro, founded in 1878...

,
Paris; the Museum für Völkerkunde, Berlin; and the American Museum of Natural History
American Museum of Natural History
The American Museum of Natural History , located on the Upper West Side of Manhattan in New York City, United States, is one of the largest and most celebrated museums in the world...

, New York.

Physical description

A fluted tablet in poor condition, 44 × 9 × 2.3 cm, made out of a crooked piece of Pacific rosewood (Orliac 2005). One end has been cut off. There is clay smeared on parts of the tablets which obscures some sequences. The left end of recto line 6 has been gouged out, and a segment has been cut out of line 1 along the bottom edge. The verso has been burnt in spots, the center has been eroded off, and Fischer reports that a large area has been lost since Barthel transcribed it in the 1950s.

Provenance

The Small St Petersburg tablet was obtained by Russian anthropologist Nicholai Miklukho-Maklai
Nicholai Miklukho-Maklai
Nicholay Miklouho-Maclay was a Russian ethnologist, anthropologist and biologist of Ukrainian, German and Polish descent.- Ancestry and early years :...

 in July 1871 on Tahiti while on board the Vityaz. He may have bought it from one of the indentured Rapanui at the Brander plantation. On 30 December 1888, the day before his death, both tablets to the Russian Geographical Society
Russian Geographical Society
The Russian Geographical Society is a learned society, founded on 6 August 1845 in Saint Petersburg, Russia.-Imperial Geographical Society:Prior to the Russian Revolution of 1917, it was known as the Imperial Russian Geographical Society....

 of St Petersburg, which permanently lent them to the museum in 1891.

Orliac (2005) carbon dated the wood to sometime after 1680 CE, though we cannot be sure the text dates from that period.

Contents

Barthel (1958) called tablets H
Rongorongo text H
Text H of the rongorongo corpus, the larger of two tablets located in Santiago 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 'Great Tradition'.-Other names:H is the standard designation, from...

, P
Rongorongo text P
Text P of the rongorongo corpus, the larger of two tablets in St Petersburg and therefore also known as the Great or Large St Petersburg tablet, is one of two dozen surviving rongorongo texts, and one of three recording the so-called 'Great Tradition'.-Other names:P is the standard designation,...

, and Q the "Grand Tradition" because of their extensive shared sequences. Since many of these appear on the same lines, Fischer believes one served in part, directly or indirectly, as the model for the others, and that they may have had a common geographic origin.

Text

Nine lines on each side display ~ 900 glyphs, out of an original total of ~ 1,100. Fischer reports that some glyphs have been "corrected". The reading order of the parallel texts H, P, and Q is well established.

Barthel
Fischer
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