5 Comments

1. 
   Jacques Guy

   2012.05.04 at 3:13 pm

   You wrote: Though there are no genuinely new glyphs, I did in fact use one code that was never used in Barthel’s original corpus. Apparently glyph code 250 had never been used.

   That is correct. The concordance at rongorongo.org shows no instance of 250 anywhere in the corpus. In fact, 350 does not occur anywhere either. Apparently, nobody had noticed or commented. The reason for this absence is simple: glyphs 250 and 350 do not occur in the corpus because they cannot exist in Barthel’s transliteration system.

   In Barthel’s system the “5” as second digit of anthropomorphic glyph codes specifies that the glyph is “sitting” with both its legs stretched out left and right while both its arms are raised.

   The third digit specifies the aspect of the hand terminating the raised arms:

   1 is a hand of three fingers pointing inward, similar to glyph 61
   2 is a clenched fist, similar to glyph 62, and so on (http://kohaumotu.org/rongorongo_org/corpus/codes.html)

   Now, since zero as third digit of an anthropomorphic code specifies a DANGLING arm with no visible fingers, it is incompatible with “5” as second digit, which specifies that both arms are RAISED.

   The glyph which you have encoded as 250 is missing the terminations of its raised arms and so the third digit of its code is unknown and can only be guessed at. In fact, Encoding it as 250 is as good a solution as any, since 250 cannot exist.

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2. 
   atua

   2012.05.04 at 4:04 pm

   Actually my reading of how the hand shape code 0 is used in practice is that it represents a “neutral”, or unspecified, hand shape. (Dangling is just the typical form of “neutral”.) One case where unspecified hand shapes occur is when the hand forms a link to the next glyph, as is the case here. 250 was used here in analogy to the way codes 210, 220, and 240 are already used—rather inconsistently—in the current corpus.
   Of course the difficulties encountered assigning codes are just another indication that the coding system is problematic.

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   • 
     Jacques Guy

     2012.05.04 at 5:08 pm

     I suspect that Barthel’s system is unfinished, that he abandoned its development half-way through when he thought that he had succeeded in deciphering the rongorongo, that is, around the time of the publication of his 1958 Scientific American article.

     The order of the three-digit codes of the anthropomorphic glyphs is absurd: head first, feet next, arms last. I cannot think of any justification for it. Perhaps Barthel believed he had found some evidence that glyphs were actually read in that order. But this is idle speculation since he never discussed the matter.

     Also absurd is this system which represents by THREE-digit codes glyphs clearly composed of FIVE elements.

     I have been trying to elaborate a new transliteration system, based on the same principles as the one I invented twenty years ago for the Voynich Manuscript: what you see is what it looks like (WYSIWILL). Do a Google search +frogguy +voynich or go directly to http://www.voynich.net/reeds/tutorial.html

     To give you just one example, your 250 would be wwjjt or wjwjt (I still hesitate about the most likely order: left leg, right leg, left arm, right arm, or left leg, left arm, right leg, right arm)

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     • 
       atua

       2012.05.04 at 5:39 pm

       Yes, we are anxiously awaiting your results. I will be happy to incorporate the system into the search apparatus.

       As for Barthel’s system: this is now just my humble opinion derived from what I understand of it, after having “read” the entire corpus several times, trying to match it to the glyphs. What Barthel achieved is quite remarkable. He was working in 1958 with paper and pencil (and index cards presumably?!) When he started he had no idea how many glyphs there were, and when viewing a glyph he had no easy way of knowing whether he had already assigned some number to a similar looking thing or not. You know why there are 50,000 Hanzi/Kanji? It’s because the Chinese could never remember whether they had already created a character for the relevant word. Since they had no dictionaries, they couldn’t look up to see whether they already had one, so they kept inventing new ones.

       Finally the numbering for the anthropomorphs is not quite so illogical. The second glyph represents the overall aspect of the body, so it is ordered anthropocentrically head-body-hand. Also the hand shape numbers hark back to the single digit glyphs 1-9 which are really the basis of his system: 1 (rectangle) 2 (circle) 3-5 (triangle). It reminds me of German Bauhaus. If those digits had been in the middle it would have destroyed the whole effect.

       Anyhow Barthel probably only really understood the result of his numbering scheme, once he finished the index, which in those days would have been done by hand. I can’t really imagine. With the computer I make a cross-index in a few minutes, but by hand…

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3. 
   atua

   2012.05.04 at 4:25 pm

   Of course the two instances of 210 (Aa7 and Pv4) in the corpus should probably just be considered errors, since similar glyphs are usually given the number 200.

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