Rongorongo text E

Text E of the rongorongo corpus, also known as "Keiti," is one of two dozen known rongorongo texts, though it survives only in reproductions.

Other names

E is the standard designation, from Barthel (1958). Fischer (1997) refers to it as RR6.

Jaussen called it also "vermoulue" 'wormeaten'.

Location

Formerly in the library of the Catholic University of Leuven (Louvain), Belgium.

Reproductions survive at the Smithsonian Institution, Washington, and the "Musée de l'Homme," Paris.

Physical description

Destroyed. Originally a fluted tablet of unknown wood, 39 × 13 cm, in beautiful condition but for some small wormholes esp. on recto, upper right side.

Provenance

One of Jaussen's tablets, "Keiti" was apparently collected on Easter Island by Fathers Roussel and Zumbohm in 1870 and sent to him in Tahiti. In 1888 Jaussen sent it to the headquarters of the "Congrégation des Sacrés-Coeurs et de l'Adoration" (SSCC) in Paris, with instructions to forward it to Charles-Joseph de Harlez de Deulin at the Catholic University at Louvain. It was sent in 1894, and stored in the university library, which was burnt down by the Germans in the siege of Louvain in 1914.

Content

This is one of the texts Metoro Tau‘a Ure 'read' for Jaussen. However, he read the verso upside down, included the end of line 1 as part of line 2 and read it backwards, from right to left.

Text

Nine lines of glyphs recto, eight verso, for ~ 880 glyphs in all. Pozdniakov found a sequence of glyphs known from several other tablets that is split between lines Er9 and Ev1, confirming Barthel's reading order.

Line 3 of the recto terminates prematurely, with its end wedged between lines 2 and 4, as seen also on the verso of "Aruku."

;Barthel

;Fischer

Image gallery

External links

* [http://www.rongorongo.org/translit/e.html Barthel's coding of text E]

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.
* POZDNIAKOV, Konstantin (1996). "Les Bases du Déchiffrement de l'Écriture de l'Ile de Pâques (The Bases of Deciphering the the Writing of Easter Island)". "Journal de la Societé des Océanistes" 103 (2): 289–303.