Glyph group numbering

31. October 2025 · Write a comment · Categories: Item A, Item B, Item C, Item D, Item E, Item F, Item G, Item H, New Features

In Horley’s seminal work (Horley, 2021) he introduces a way of referring unambiguously to locations on the tablets. He assigns each group of ligatured glyphs a number, ascending in the order of the writing direction. Recognizing a ligatured group should be fairly straightforward, even for the uninitiated. There are some tricky points however.

For one thing, some glyphs are still recognized as single glyphs, even though they consist of two isolated parts. For instance, glyph 017 consists of two isolated parts placed vertically, 053 consists of three lines, and 025 consists of two curved boxes which are sometimes drawn touching, but not always.

For another, Horley is very careful to distinguish instances of touching glyphs from those that are not, and numbers the groups accordingly. This happens even in cases where the touching or non-touching seems likely to be coincidental. This can also mean that he assigns separate numbers to glyphs that are drawn as linked by Barthel and/or Fischer, but where he determines that the linking is not present. Anyhow the numbers shown refer to the numbers in Horley’s work, regardless of the way they are shown by Barthel and Fischer. For this reason too, there will be skipped numbers, whenever Horley recognizes some glyph that the others did not see. And in a few cases Barthel, or more likely Fischer, sees a glyph that Horley does not recognize. Such glyph groups go un-numbered.

At the same time I am also bringing the numbering of tablet sides in line with Horley’s work. Horley provides evidence for renaming the sides of some of the tablet after providing arguments for determining which side is front (“recto”) and which should be the back (“verso”), Among the tablets that have so far been updated are the following:

  • A: Tahua is changed from a/b to r/v
  • B: Aruku-Kurenga is changed from r/v to a/b
  • C: Mamari is changed from a/b to r/v
  • D: Échancrée; as mentioned previously, the lines of side B are renumbered in opposite order, i.e., 1–6 becomes 6–1
  • Tablets E–H have also received glyph group numbers, but the side names stay the same

New display pages

26. June 2012 · 1 comment · Categories: Barthel, Fischer, Item A, Item B, Item D, Tablets

http://kohaumotu.org/Rongorongo/svg/index.html

It seems I keep putting up more versions of the same thing. But here now finally are pages which use the svg images to display the tablets together with their codes. So far Items A, B, and D for both Barthel and Fischer tracings have been completed.

On these pages, the glyphs are individualized and clickable. Hovering over a glyph will hilite it in cyan. Lines are displayed to show glyph subdivisions, except in the case of stacked glyphs. So far the codes are still the original codes of Barthel/CEIPP. Missing codes are indicated with “_”.

However it should be noted that the “traditional” order of glyphs has been changed. As has long been known, stacked glyphs should be read bottom to top. Nevertheless the numbering given by Barthel (and CEIPP) has always given the codes top_glyph:bottom_glyph. For example the third glyph group on Tahua, side a, line 2 was written as 103a:095bjt. This has now been changed. If the codes are selected and copied, it will be noted that the order has been reversed. This will become more apparent as further interfaces are put up.

Better organization of the welter of pages now on this site still awaits.