Koahu rongorongo: Easter Island’s ‘talking wood’ Start Price USD 249.00 Current Price USD 1,400.00 Time Left - Bid Count 7 Buy It Now Price - Reserve Price - Start Time Tuesday, September 02, 2008 End Time Tuesday, September 09, 2008 Location Vienna, WIEN See more about 'Koahu rongorongo: Easter Island’s ‘talking wood’ ' Description Koahu rongorongo:  Easter Island’s ‘talking woods’ remain one of the Oceania’s most enduring enigmas. There are about two dozen known examples of Easter Island’s unique script rongorongo. The only indigenous script in Oceania, rongorongo, consists of pictographic symbols, that depict antropomorphs, plants, and geometric motifs as well as objects such as the rei miro (gorgets worn by chiefly women). While a number of proposed “translations” have been published over the years, none can survive the scrutiny  and it remains undeciphered. Even the fundamental nature of the symbols themselves is unclear. According to oral tradition, knowledge of rongorongo was restricted to a class of priests known as tangata rongorongo. Each lineage had one or more tangata rongorongo, who reportedly kept separate houses where they met to recite with the aid of tablets and to instruct novices in their use. It is likely, that scores of individual tablets originally existed, incorporating diverse aspects of the island’s sacred and secular history. The majority of tangata rongorongo were likely among the chiefs and priests captured during the slaves raids of 1862-63, and most probably died in peruvian guano mines and plantations. By the late 1860s, when european scholars first took an interest in the tablets, there were apparently no individuals alive who could still recite from them. In the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, Rapa Nui sources reported that many tablets were burned on the order of missionaries, perhaps because of their perceived association with the island’s indigenous religion. Other tablets were preserved by being hidden in the caves.   ITEM DESCRIPTION:   The above koahu rongorongo is a beautiful and an extremely good replica of ‘talking wood’ from 1920. It gives impression of the original appearance of kohau rongorongo. Its intricately detailed, obsidian carved pictographs display the alternately inverted rows of symbols characteristics of rongorongo inscriptions.   MATERIAL: Obsidians carved wood, 'thespesia populnea', on the Easter Island also known as ‘makoi’. Worldwide there as only 7 (+ one in British Museum, London and one in Vienna, Austria), ie. altogether 9 rongorongos manufactured from this type of wood.   DIMENSIONS: ca. 41.3 cm x 14.8cm   More pictures: here   Bibliography: 1. Catherine et Michel Orliac: „Bois Sculptés de l’ Île de Pâques”, 1995 2. Stéphen Chauvet: „Easter Islands and its Mysteries“, 1935 3. Katherine Pease Routledge: „The Mystery of Easter Island”, 1919   Place a Bid!