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<\/a>Little over two dozen rongorongo tablets have been documented around the world (some are of questionable authenticity).\u00a0 They are remains of a unique script thought to have evolved on the island sometime between the thirteenth and seventeenth centuries.[1]<\/a>\u00a0 Catholic missionaries in the mid nineteenth century first recognised their value as evidence of an advanced Polynesian civilisation.[2]<\/a>\u00a0 By then the indigenous people no longer knew the meaning of the glyphs carved on wood but they called these tablets \u2018kohau rongorongo\u2019 or \u2018singing wood\u2019[3]<\/a> and scholars continue to debate their translation.<\/p>\n Dr Horley identified the Hocken photograph as being of the tablet known as Keiti<\/em>, which has been interpreted in relation to the Rapa Nui lunar calendar in three recent papers published in the Journal de la Societe des Oceanistes<\/em> in 2011.[4]<\/a>\u00a0 The original artefact, which measured 39 x 13 cm, was sent by Tepano Jaussen, Bishop of Tahiti, to Europe in 1888 and destroyed in a fire during World War I at the library of l\u2019Universit\u00e9 Catholique at Louvain, Belgium.[5]<\/a><\/p>\n Just a few original photographs of Keiti<\/em> remain and how the Hocken came to hold one remains a mystery in itself.\u00a0 Paul Horley, who continues to research the subject, knows of two sets of photographs taken before the tablet was destroyed. \u2018One set of photographs was made under direct light with the glyphs filled in with a white substance to improve the contrast (these images are in the collection of the Congregation of the Sacred Hears of Jesus and Mary, Rome).\u00a0 The second set of photographs was made under slanted light, and the photograph that you have, showing the recto side of the tablet, belongs to this set.\u00a0 The other copies of these pictures can be found in the National Anthropological Archives, Smithsonian Institution; Library and Archives of the Bernice P. Bishop Museum, Honolulu; Bancroft Library at the University of California, Berkeley.\u00a0 Some of these images are later prints\u2026\u2019.[6]<\/a><\/p>\n One piece of information that we have been able to add to the store of knowledge is that the Hocken photograph of Keiti <\/em>may have been taken by the photographer Charles Spitz (1857-1894), who had a studio in Papeete.\u00a0 As mentioned above, the print is one of a collection of ten and the mounts of some of the others are stamped with the words \u2018Collection of J.L. Young\u2019.\u00a0 James Lyle Young (1849-1929) lived in Papeete from 1882 to 1929 while working in the trading business.[7]<\/a>\u00a0 He collected and later gave most of the other Easter Island artefacts recorded in the photographs to the Bishop Museum in Honolulu in 1920 and they also hold prints of these.\u00a0\u00a0 Several of the Hocken photographs reveal parts of Spitz\u2019s studio mark either showing through from the back or shining on the surface.<\/p>\n The collection of Easter Island photographs at the Hocken bear no old accession numbers so one can only guess about how they entered the collection.\u00a0 A possible source was H.D. Skinner, best known as a past Curator and Director of the Otago Museum but also one-time Librarian of the Hocken (1919-1926).\u00a0 The Museum then housed the Library and is another Dunedin institution fortunate enough to hold a Rapa Nui treasure in the form of a moai <\/em>(large stone statue), registered in 1929.[8]<\/a><\/p>\n [1]<\/a> http:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Rongorongo<\/a> (accessed 22 July 2013).<\/p>\n<\/div>\n [2]<\/a> For a comprehensive history see Steven Roger Fischer, Rongorongo, the Easter Island Script: history, tradition, texts<\/em>, Oxford, 1997.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n [3]<\/a> Werner Wolff, \u2018The Mystery of the Easter Island Script\u2019, Journal of the Polynesian Society<\/em>, 54, no.1 (1945), p.1.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n![\"\"](\"https:\/\/blogs.otago.ac.nz\/thehockenblog\/files\/2013\/08\/Rongorongo-blog13-201-2-300x253.jpg\")
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