Rongorongo tablet from the Ethnological Museum, Berlin

Abstract

This paper aims to improve documentation of the rongorongo tablet VI 4878 from the Berlin Ethnological Museum. For the first time (to the best of our knowledge), we present the detailed digital photographs of the entire artifact almost at the original scale. The computer enhancement of these images helped to produce improved tracings that surpass the tracings published by Adolf Bastian (1883), Thomas Barthel (1958) and Steven Fischer (1997) by the number of documented glyphs. Analysis of the parallel passages shows that the Berlin tablet shares glyph sequences with so-called “Great Tradition” (Large Santiago/Large and Small St. Petersburg tablets), as well as with Aruku Kurenga tablet. Some particular sign groups from the Berlin tablet can be seen on the tablets Tahua, Echancrée, the Small and the Large Washington tablets.

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