View source for Rongorongo text P

{{short description|One of the undeciphered texts of Easter Island}}
{{Use dmy dates|date=June 2020}}
[[Image:Rongorongo P-v Great St Petersburg (negative).jpg|right|frameless|upright=2]]

'''Text P''' of the '''[[rongorongo]]''' corpus, the larger of two tablets in St. Petersburg and therefore also known as the '''Great''' or '''Large St Petersburg tablet''', is one of two dozen surviving rongorongo texts, and one of three recording the so-called "[[Decipherment_of_rongorongo#Grand Tradition|Grand Tradition]]".

==Other names==
'''P''' is the standard designation, from [[Thomas Barthel|Barthel]] (1958). Fischer (1997) refers to it as '''RR18'''.

==Location==
[[Peter the Great Museum of Anthropology and Ethnography]], St Petersburg. Catalog # 403/13-2.

There are reproductions in the ''[[Musée de l'Homme]],'' Paris; the ''[[:de:Ethnologisches Museum|Museum für Völkerkunde]],'' Berlin; and the [[American Museum of Natural History]], New York.

==Description==
A well-preserved unfluted tablet with a "panhandle", 63 × 15 or 10 × 2&nbsp;cm, made of ''[[Podocarpus latifolius]]'' wood (Orliac 2007). There are traces of clay on the tablet, but it does not obscure the glyphs as in tablet '''Q'''. Eight lashing holes have been bored along the long edge and another at the end.

==Provenance==
Fischer (1997) believes that the Large Santiago tablet was likely found by Father [[Hippolyte Roussel|Roussel]] in early 1870, perhaps in ''Taura Renga'' house at [[Orongo|{{saltillo}}Orongo]]. It was given to the ''[[Chilean corvette O'Higgins (1866)|O'Higgins]]'' in that year to forward it ''via'' [[Valparaíso]] to [[Florentin-Étienne Jaussen|Bishop Jaussen]] in Tahiti. Jaussen presented this piece to the young Russian anthropologist [[Nicholai Miklukho-Maklai]] when the latter visited the Ha{{okina}}apape Mission from the ''[[:ru:Витязь (корвет, 1862)|Vityaz]]'' on 24 July 1871. On 30 December 1888, the day before his death, Miklukho-Maklai gave his collection, with both St Petersburg tablets, to the [[Russian Geographical Society]] in St Petersburg, which permanently lent them to the museum in 1891.

The nine lashing holes suggest that '''P''' had been made into a plank for a canoe, perhaps the same canoe as [[Rongorongo text S|tablet '''S''']]. Fischer believes it had probably been initially made from "a damaged and reshapen European or American oar", like tablets '''[[Rongorongo text A|A]]''' and '''[[Rongorongo text V|V]]'''.

==Contents==
Barthel (1958) called tablets '''[[Rongorongo text H|H]]''', '''P''', and '''Q''' the "Grand Tradition" because of their extensive paraphrased sequences. Since many of these appear on the same lines, Fischer believes one served in part, directly or indirectly, as the model for the others, and that they may have had a common geographic origin.

==Text==
There are eleven lines on each side for a total of ~ 1,540 glyphs. Line '''v2''' was carved into an existing indentation. A hair-line has been cut along the narrow end with what Fischer believes to have been obsidian. The reading order of the parallel texts '''H''', '''P''', and '''Q''' is well established.

Because of the odd number of lines on the recto, the verso starts at the indentation on the top. Fischer reports that several glyphs were traced out with an obsidian flake, without being finished with a shark tooth.

;Barthel
{{wide image|Barthel Pr.png|1063px|<big>Recto, as traced by Barthel. The lines have been rearranged to reflect English reading order: '''Pr1''' at top, '''Pr11''' at bottom.</big>}}

{{wide image|Barthel Pv.png|1039px|<big>Verso, as traced by Barthel: '''Pv1''' at top, '''Pv11''' at bottom.</big>}}

;Fischer

{{Expand section|date=June 2008}}

==Image gallery==
<gallery>
Image:Rongorongo P-r Great St Petersburg.jpg|Recto
Image:Rongorongo P-v Great St Petersburg.jpg|Verso
Image:Rongorongo P-v Great St Petersburg (negative).jpg|Negative of verso
</gallery>

==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.
* ORLIAC, Catherine. 2007. "Botanical Identification of the Wood of the Large ''Kohau Rongorongo'' tablet of St. Petersburg." ''Rapa Nui Journal'' 21(1):7–10.

==External links==
*[http://www.osterinsel.de/34-rongorongo-tafel-p.htm Barthel's coding of text P]

{{Rongorongo}}

{{DEFAULTSORT:Rongorongo Text P}}
[[Category:Rongorongo inscriptions]]