EASTER ISLAND
An Astronomical Zodiac
Honolulu Tablet No. B 3622
Decipherment by Andis Kaulins

The wooden Honolulu Tablet No. B 3622



One of the Easter Island Tablets (Honolulu Tablet No. B. 3622) - today in the museum in Honolulu - is an astrological Zodiac. The materials presented here are excerpted from the book, An Astrological Zodiac in the Script of Easter Island, by Andis Kaulins, the main pages of which are scanned online (click the link). The key to decipherment of this tablet is in the recognition that it is neither alphabetic, syllabic nor purely hieroglyphic - but that like signs are part of "one sign" viz. "one concept". When we group like signs together, we see that the above tablet is an astrological zodiac, with the recognizable signs in the correct order, and the remainder of the signs subject to explanation by an examination of relevant sources.

Reading from right to left the signs are:

Leo (Regulus, mul.UR.GU.LU, viz. Hydra, the snake, the "U"-type figure),
Virgo (Vulva, Spica, mul.AB.SIN, the cross-figure),
Libra (the three "horns" together, qaran.mul. GIRTAB)
Scorpio (Ophiuchus, the one-legged man of the Quechua)
Sagittarius (the two-legged man, Hercules)
Capricorn (goat's horn)
Pisces (the two fish)
Aries (represented by two stars, perhaps including the Pleiades ?)
Taurus (the Hyades as the three "hooks", perhaps including the Pleiades ?)
The gems ? on the belt of Orion (as the three stars of Orion's Belt)
Gemini (the two joined figures)
Cancer (the grabbing claws)

ALL are in the correct order.

The two separate symbols of the bird and the fish might be read as ZIB.BUOT = "stars" deriving from a combination of Indo-European terms as e.g. Latvian ZIV- (fish) and PUT.nis (bird).

The analysis above is substantiated by the same basic order of signs - 30 degrees removed - in the cursive "signature" of the Easter Island chief(s) as appended to the official document by which the Gonzalez party in 1770-1771 claimed Easter island for Spain See Aguera y Infanzon, D.F.A. de, "The Voyage of Captain Don Felipe Gonzalez to Easter Island in 1770-1771", Hakluyt Society Publications, Series II, No. 13, trans. by Bolton Glavill Corney in the section "Journal of the Principal Occurrences During the Voyage (1770)". This was the chief's "signature" - as reproduced below.



The meaning is clear when we compare it to the Honolulu Tablet B. 3622 - as below.



The pictographs have simply become more and more "hieratic" i.e. more "cursive", as writing always does with time. For scans of the main book pages
GO TO An Astrological Zodiac in the Script of Easter Island