Easter Island inscriptions. This name of snakes is thus used, we find, in hundreds of the dialects and languages of the above-named regions; and in the inscriptions of Easter Island it is often used in both of these meanings. Wherever we find the word snake with these two significances, we shall by full research be able to trace it back to its Asian home; and a careful analysis of this term will show us why the snake has been connected with two such opposite ideas, as enemies and oppressors, or teachers, rulers, and protectors. The reason is, that one was connected with the sky and the deities; the other with the demons, or under-the-earth enemies and opponents. In old Chaldea and Akkadia, Anu^__the sky god, or deity of the abyss^__as his name shows, was the sky snake, viz. = "the lightning"; as A is = "star," or = "deity;" N is = "sky," ="abyss;" and U is = "snake;" in after times he became the chief of the spirits, deities and protector; whereas Ti-an, and Tiam, and Tiamat^__ =the demons or snakes of the earth^__were the enemies with whom the conflicts with the sky-spirits were carried on; and these dragons and snakes of the earth, or below the earth, were the oppressors of men, the evil spirits. From these olden times the term snakes has been used, by all people who derived their ideas from the Turanians, in these two opposite and diverse senses; and in the minds of these people there was no vagueness or contradiction in using the term snakes to imply such different things as enemies and teachers; and they had no difficulty in distinguishing the snakes they thus were speaking of, though sometimes they added some other word as good, or feathered, to the term snakes.
   Without a clear comprehension of the totemic names, and the epithets applied to the teachers, the chiefs, the friends, or the enemies, these inscriptions we are considering would be less easily understood, but with this they are quite clear to anyone acquainted with the languages of the writers, or those for whom they were written. Such phrases as yntin = the sun's, or yntirunantin = the sun's men and their belongings, or yntichuri = the sun's children, and many such phrases which so frequently are found in these inscriptions all mean that they were considered to be of the families of the peoples whose ancestral spirits were in the sun, and who would thus reverently regard the sun as the home of the spirits of their dead relations, and to which their spirits after death would return, and from which their spirits had been derived; as well as their protecting spirits or deities being found in the sun. Therefore all the sun's families were spoken or written of in this manner with more or less respect, while all others, not so related to the sun, were considered or regarded as barbarians and outcasts. The term loved, or beloved, tribe is very frequently found in these inscriptions, as applied to their own or any confederated tribes.