Rongorongo text X
Encyclopedia
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, known as the (New York) Birdman, is one of two dozen surviving rongorongo texts.
Other names
X 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 RR25.
Location
American Museum of Natural HistoryAmerican 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. Catalog # ST/5309.
Physical description
A tangata manuTangata manu
The Tangata manu , was the winner of a traditional competition on Rapa Nui . The ritual was an annual competition to collect the first Sooty Tern egg of the season from the islet of Motu Nui, swim back to Rapa Nui and climb the sea cliff of Rano Kau to the clifftop village of Orongo.-Myth:In the...
statuette in excellent condition, 33 × 8 × 6.2 cm, of unknown wood. (An old identification of toromiro
Toromiro
Sophora toromiro, commonly known as Toromiro, is a species of flowering tree in the legume family, Fabaceae, that is endemic to Easter Island. Heavy deforestation had eliminated most of the island's forests by the first half of the 17th century , and the once common toromiro became rare and...
, as with several other objects so identified, may not be reliable.)
There are seven discrete texts, all but one on the neck inscribed on the right side of the body.
Provenance
The Appleton Sturgis Collection in the USA obtained this statuette at an unknown date and from an unknown source. It was acquired by the American Museum from them somewhere between 1891 and 1893 (Fischer 1997).Routledge
Katherine Routledge
Katherine Maria Routledge, née Pease was a British archaeologist who initiated the first true survey of Easter Island....
says in her notes that a Rapanui elder told her that all the manu miro ('wood birds') were inscribed with glyphs. However, text X is the only one known (Fischer 1997). Fischer accepts it as genuine and speculates 'Perhaps it was obtained on Rapanui in the first half of the nineteenth century by an American whaler.' However, other scholars have wondered whether the inscription might have been added later.
Text
The seven texts range in length from two to thirteen glyphs, for a total of 38 glyphs.The glyphs were apparently etched with obsidian but then not finished with a shark tooth, and therefore several of them have been nearly rubbed out over time. However, Fischer (1997) is of the opinion that the glyphs are of 'the highest classical style', and suggests the statuette may have been traded to a passing ship before the inscription was finished.
Fischer
- The crown
- The lower jaw
- The neck
- The breast
- The belly
- The flank
- The hip/thigh