Text E 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, also known as Keiti, is one of two dozen known rongorongo texts, though it survives only in photographs and rubbings.

Other names

E 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 RR6.

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...

 called it also vermoulue 'wormeaten'.

Location

Formerly in the library of the Catholic University of Leuven

Catholic University of Leuven

The Catholic University of Leuven, or of Louvain, was the largest, oldest and most prominent university in Belgium. The university was founded in 1425 as the University of Leuven by John IV, Duke of Brabant and approved by a Papal bull by Pope Martin V.During France's occupation of Belgium in the...

 (Louvain), Belgium. Pinart published rubbings, which are kept in the Bancroft Library

Bancroft Library

The Bancroft Library is the primary special collections library of the University of California, Berkeley. It was acquired as a gift/purchase from its founder, Hubert Howe Bancroft, with the proviso that it retain the name Bancroft Library in perpetuity...

 of the University of California, Berkeley

University of California, Berkeley

The University of California, Berkeley , is a teaching and research university established in 1868 and located in Berkeley, California, USA...

.

Fischer (1997) says that the tablet survives in replicas made from casts. However, these replicas appear to have been of the Small Santiago

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:...

; other than the rubbings, Keiti only survives in the two sets of photographs reproduced in the gallery below (Horley 2010).

Physical description

Destroyed during shelling of Leuven

Leuven

Leuven is the capital of the province of Flemish Brabant in the Flemish Region, Belgium...

 in 1914. 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

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...

 tablets, Keiti 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. In 1888 Jaussen sent it to the headquarters of the Congrégation des Sacrés-Coeurs et de l'Adoration

Congregation 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) in Paris, with instructions to forward it to Charles-Joseph de Harlez de Deulin

Charles-Joseph de Harlez de Deulin

Charles-Joseph de Harlez de Deulin was a Belgian Orientalist, domestic prelate, canon of the cathedral of Liège, and member of the Academie Royale of Belgium, who studied and translated the Zoroastrian holy texts.The family of de Harlez was an old and noble family of Liège...

 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

Rongorongo text B

Text B of the rongorongo 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...

.

Barthel
Fischer