(reversed)
(reversed)
| "top" | ||
|---|---|---|
| Bishop Museum drawing | Fischer drawings | |
| Line 1 | not shown | |
| Line 2 (reversed) |
|
|
| Line 3 | |
|
| Line 4 (reversed) |
|
|
| "bottom" | ||
For the purposes of this discussion I will consider the orientation of the Bishop Museum drawing to be the default: thus top, bottom and upside-down are to be understood relative to this drawing.
Fischer segments the part of the tablet in the Bishop Museum drawing into three lines, but also identifies remains of a fourth line above this. He then numbers these lines from top to bottom as "Line 1", "Line 2", etc. Finally he determines on the basis of the identifiable glyphs that his lines 2 and 4 are upside-down in keeping with the standard reversed boustrophedon reading order of tablets.
Care should be taken to note two issues with respect to Fischer's numbering. First, this numbering amounts to treating the Bishop Museum drawing as being upside-down. Standard Rongorongo reading order is from bottom to top, i.e., away from the reader. Given that Fischer has no evidence to lead him to change the orientation of the tablet, his line ordering introduces a potential point of confusion. Second, assuming Fischer's identification of four lines along with their glyph orientation is correct, it necessarily follows that there will be at least one further missing line. This is because both "Line 1" and "Line 4" are upside-down with respect to reading order, when viewed from the closest edge. Thus a more appropriate line numbering would be one of the following two possibilities:
Of course considering that this "tablet" is a mere fragment, further lines might be missing as well. Also the "lines" identified here are mere line fragments, and as such the discussion of line ordering may well be moot.