Above illustration appears in the “Tafeln” of Barthel (1958) with the description “Originalzeichnung des American Museum of Natural History, New York”. This graphic was turned—somewhat cluelessly by yours truly—into 7 “lines”. Three of these, the “neck”, the “belly”, and the “flank” were in turn made out to be two, non-boustrophaedon lines each. For reference see the Wikipedia page, which shows the drawings made by Fischer (1997). Finally in each of these cases the two lines were split and re-joined into single lines.

The result may have looked tidy, but was completely unwarranted. It seems more careful inspection of the actual object reveals that:

• On the “neck”; those two little fishes which are rather suspect as glyphs to begin with, do not form anything of a second line
• On the “flank”; the undescript angled strokes actually form a single line. Thus splitting the line into two results in the glyphs being split in half. The line(s) were also turned upside-down!
• Only in the case of the “belly” are there actually two short line segments, as Horley (2021) makes clear. The two line segments are somewhat jammed together.

Mea culpa.

Below are links to some of the displays of Item X in these pages:

• Barthel graphics
• Fischer graphics
• Barthel/Fischer comparison
• No tablet view

And here links to other pages for this item:

• Page for Item X on old site.
• Item X on Rongorongo.org
• Item X on Wikipedia