Jaussen described in his notes how Metoro started reading the first tablet presented to him (Tablet B, or Aruku-Kurenga):
The solemn moment had arrived. I put one of my tablets in the hands of Metoro. He turned it, turned it again, looking for the beginning of the text, and then he started to chant. He chanted the lowest line, from left to right. Arrived at the end, he chanted the nearest line above, from right to left, the third from left to right, the fourth from right to left, like the plowing of oxen. When he arrived at the top line, he passed from the recto to the nearest line of the verso and descended, line after line, like oxen plowing both sides of a hill, starting on the lower side and ending at the bottom on the opposite side. The reader can turn the tablet after each line if he does not want to read the signs upside down.... (Métraux 1940:396, Métraux's translation)
Barthel saw there evidence of Metoro's knowledge and great competence:
| Er beherrschte die Schriftzeichen soweit, daß er sie auch in umgekehrter Stellung lesen konnte... Demgegenüber mußte Ure-Vaeiko die ihm vorgelegte Photographie einer Schifttafel nach jeder Zeile um 180 Grad drehen | He mastered the signs so well that he could also read them upside down... Ure-Vaeiko, on the contray, had to rotate the photograph of the tablet in front of him after each line by 180° | |
| (Barthel 1958:200) | ||
Barthel was first to identify a lunar calendar on Tablet Mamari, lines Ca6 to Ca9; but he made no mention that Metoro had chanted that side backward, last line first, first line last. It is not clear whether he referred to his own interpretation or to Metoro's chant when he concluded his analysis of the lunar calendar:
| Der "Gesang von den Mondnächten" auf der Tafel Mamari bringt einen Teil von dem wieder ans Licht, was Englert bereits als unwiederbringlich verloren beklagt hat1 | The "chant of the nights of the month" brings to light part of what Englert had mourned as irretrievably lost (note 1) | |
| (Barthel 1958:246) | ||
Barthel reported how Metoro read the obverse of Tablet Keiti back-to-front, but that does not seem to have aroused his suspicion much:
| Metoro jede Zeile entgegensetzt zur regulären Richtung rezitierte, also vom Zeilenschluß hin zum Zeilenanfang. Von einem "Lesen" kann natürlich in diesem Falle überhaupt nicht mehr gesprochen werden. Wie sich zumindest für das Verso der Tafel "Keiti" nachweisen läßt, sang Metoro keineswegs die in den Inschriften fixierten Traditionen, sondern legte isolierten Schriftzeichen bloße Benennungen unter | Metoro chanted each line in the direction opposite to normal, i.e. from the end of the line to its beginning. In this case one can obviously no longer speak of a "reading." As can be demonstrated at least for the verso of Tablet Keiti, Metoro was not singing at all the traditions preserved in the inscriptions, but was attaching mere identifications to isolated signs | |
| (Barthel 1958:202) | ||
Note 1. Englert 1948:312: "Estos conocimientos han bajado a la tumba con los "tangata manu," hombres sabios en ciencia antigua" (This knowledge went to the grave with the "tangata manu," men wise in old science.)