Text M 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 larger of two tablets in Vienna and therefore also known as the Large or Great Vienna tablet, is one of two dozen surviving rongorongo texts.

Other names

M 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 RR24.

Location

Museum für Völkerkunde

Vienna Museum of Ethnology

thumb|The Museum of Ethnolog is housed in a wing of the [[Hofburg Imperial Palace]].thumb|InteriorThe Museum of Ethnology in Vienna is the largest anthropological museum in Austria, established in 1876. It currently resides in the Hofburg Imperial Palace and houses a quarter million ethnographical...

, Vienna. Catalog # 22869.

There is a reproduction 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.

Physical description

A rotted unfluted tablet of Pacific rosewood (Orliac 2005), 28.4 × 13.7 × 2.5 cm, M is one of the rongorongo tablets in the worst condition. It evidently lay on side b in damp soil, probably in a cave, for many years. The edges are rotted and the surfaces worm-eaten. Fischer suggests that the gashes on the top and side may have been intentional, for lashings.

Provenance

In 1882 an archaeological expedition aboard the SMS Hyäne visited Easter Island, and captain Wilhelm Geiseler purchased two tablets. The purchase had been arranged by Schlubach, the German consul in Valparaíso

Valparaíso

Valparaíso is a city and commune of Chile, center of its third largest conurbation and one of the country's most important seaports and an increasing cultural center in the Southwest Pacific hemisphere. The city is the capital of the Valparaíso Province and the Valparaíso Region...

, at the request of Adolf Bastian

Adolf Bastian

Adolf Bastian was a 19th century polymath best remembered for his contributions to the development of ethnography and the development of anthropology as a discipline...

, the director of the Königliches Museum für Völkerkunde in Berlin. The tablets were given to the uncle of Schlubach's wife, Alexander Salmon, Jr

Alexander Salmon, Jr

Alexander Ariipaea Vehiaitipare Salmon Jr. was the English-Jewish-Tahitian co-owner of the Maison Brander plantations on Tahiti and de facto ruler of Easter Island from 1878 till its cession to Chile in 1888.-Family:...

, who then shipped three tablets, M, N, and O, to Schlubach. Several years later, when Schlubach returned to Hamburg, he sent just one of the tablets to Bastian and sold the other two privately to the Hamburg firm "Klée und Kocher". They were then sold to the Austrian Vice-Consul in Hamburg, Heinrich Freiherr von Westenholz, who donated them to Vienna's Museum für Völkerkunde in 1886.

Alexander Salmon, Jr, the manager of the Brander plantations on Easter Island who had transcribed and (poorly) translated the 'readings' that 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...

 obtained for his texts, encouraged the manufacture of Rapanui artworks, and several scholars have questioned its authenticity. However, he never presented them as authentic, and Fischer accepts this text as genuine.

Content

Although there is little text to go on, Fischer reports that line Mr2 shares two sequences of glyphs with Gr2 of the Small Santiago tablet

Rongorongo text G

Text G of the rongorongo corpus, the smaller of two tablets located in Santiago and therefore also known as the Small Santiago tablet, is one of two dozen surviving rongorongo texts. It may include a short genealogy.-Other names:...

, which he suggests may have been the model for the Large Vienna.

Text

Nine lines of ~ 120 glyphs are visible on side a; side b is 'destroyed'. Fischer says that M apparently once held c. 11 lines of text on either side, much like "Mamari". Line a7 has 'faint traces' of glyphs which Fischer believes might be recoverable with electronic imaging.

Fischer also reports (p. 398) that M has suffered recent damage:

It is sad to have to report that between 1933, when Paul Rivet had a plaster cast (M.H. 33.79.2) of this tablet made for his Musée d'Ethnologie (now Musée de l'Homme) in Paris, and 1992, when I inspected the original in Vienna, great damage had occurred. The sequence is now missing from the middle top line of the tablet […]. What is far worse, however: someone has also apparently intentionally removed a piece from the tablet that contained parts of two lines of glyphs. Some 13 elements of [M]a1 and three of [M]a2—a fragment c. 7 × 2 cm in size—are now missing.