Text I of the rongorongo corpus, also known as the Santiago Staff, is the longest of the two dozen surviving rongorongo texts. Statistical analysis suggests that its contents are distinct from those of the other texts.
Text I of the rongorongo corpus, also known as the Santiago Staff, is the longest of the two dozen surviving rongorongo texts. Statistical analysis suggests that its contents are distinct from those of the other texts.
I is the standard designation, from Barthel (1958). Fischer (1997) refers to it as RR10.
Museo Nacional de Historia Natural, Santiago. Catalog # 5.499 (316).
There are reproductions at the Institut für Völkerkunde, Tübingen (prior to 1989); Bishop Museum, Honolulu; Musées Royaux de Bruxelles, Belgium (as of 2008 temporarily housed in the Musée du Malgré Tout in Treignes); and in Steven Fischer's personal collection in Auckland.
The 126-cm long staff is entirely covered with glyphs running along its length. It is round in cross-section, 5.7 cm in diameter at one end and 6.4 cm at the other (per Fischer; length 126.6 cm and circumferences at extremities of 17.1 and 20.0 cm per Bettocchi), and made of unknown wood. It is in good condition, but with some splitting, and it is battered on one side of the thick end, evidently from resting diagonally on the ground when held. There is some pitting just below the start of line 12 (Fischer's line 1), which Fischer believes may be due to corrosion from the sebum of the bearer's thumb.
This is widely thought to be one of the finest rongorongo inscriptions. Fischer writes The scribe displays the same expertise as the scribe of side a of "Échancrée", and Barthel that The creator must have been a master of his discipline.
The Staff was presented to the officers of the Chilean corvette O'Higgins in 1870 by the French colonist Dutrou-Bornier, who claimed that it had belonged to an ꞌariki (king). At that point it disappeared,[ citation needed ] but in 1876 it was given to the director of the Museo Nacional de Historia Natural, Rudolf Philippi.
This is the only incised kouhau (staff) that remains, the sole remnant of a corpus once as numerous as the tablets.
Dutrou-Bornier thought that the Staff was a weapon and had belonged to an ꞌariki. When Anacleto Goñi, the commander of the O'Higgins, asked the Rapanui people its significance, he reported that he was,
Pozdniakov (1996:290, 299) notes that the Staff shares short phrases with texts Gv and T (or at least Ta), but has nothing in common with the rest of the rongorongo corpus.
The Staff provided the basis of Steven Fischer's attempted decipherment, which is widely known through his book, but which has not been accepted by others in the field. Fischer believes the Staff consists exclusively of creation chants in the form of "all the birds copulated with the fish; there issued forth the sun". The sign which Fischer translates as 'copulate', 76 
, a putative phallus, occurs 564 times on the Staff.
Guy (1998) argues that this is untenable, and further that if Butinov and Knorozov are correct about a genealogy on Gv , then Fischer's putative phallus is a patronymic marker, and the Staff would consist almost entirely of personal names. Fischer's creation chant given above might instead "Son of (bird) was killed", since the fish 
was used metaphorically for a war victim. (The kohau îka "lines of fish" rongorongo were lists of persons killed in war.) The Staff would more likely be a list of battles and of their heroes and victims.
There are thirteen full and one partial line, containing ~ 2,320 glyphs per Fischer. As of April 2008, the CEIPP counted 2208 legible glyphs, 261 indistinct or partially legible glyphs, and estimated that 35 glyphs had been effaced.
Although the direction of reading has been determined, the point where the text starts has not. Philippi's line numbers were arbitrary, but kept by Barthel. The main asymmetry is that line 12 (Fischer's line 1) is 90 cm long, running three quarters the length of the Staff. The space occupied by lines 12 and 13 is 30 mm wide at the thick end of the staff (at the end of line 12 and beginning of line 13), but only 17 mm wide at the tapered end (at the end of line 13). Past the cut-off point (the beginning) of line 12, the baseline of line 13 shifts upward, and the glyphs widen to fill in the gap. From that point on, 13 is parallel with line 11 rather than antiparallel as is normally the case for adjacent lines.
Fischer takes the short line 12 to be the beginning of the text, reasoning that it would have been easier to indent the first line than to estimate how long the last line would be when fitting it in, and that the large glyphs in line 13 past the end of line 12 were written that way to fill in the gap. However, he does note that there are remnants of pre-inscription tracings that would have enabled such an estimate. Horley (2011) makes a case that 12 was the last line: That the text starts at line 11, wraps around (in descending order) to 13, and that 12 was fit into the gap between the slightly skew lines 11 and 13. The way lines 12 and 13 squeeze together (the glyphs are 12–14 mm high at the thick end of the staff, but only 8–10 mm high at the end of line 12 where 13 takes over) is consistent with these being the last lines engraved.
The Staff is one of only two rongorongo texts inscribed with vertical bars (|), 103 of them (there are also a few in text T), which Fischer believes divided the text into sections.
Fischer (1997) writes,
Fischer renumbered the lines, shifting them by upward by a count of three, with Philippi's line 12 as his line 1. He made at least one obvious error in his transcription, with the very first glyph:
, here upside-down at the left of Philippi's drawing and to the left of the red line in Barthel's rubbing) and subsequent glyphs (three-quarters of the way through Barthel's line 13) fill in the gap left by the short line 12.  | This section needs expansion. You can help by adding to it. (June 2008) |
Rongorongo is a system of glyphs discovered in the 19th century on Rapa Nui that appears to be writing or proto-writing. Numerous attempts at decipherment have been made, with none being successful. Although some calendrical and what might prove to be genealogical information has been identified, none of these glyphs can actually be read. If rongorongo does prove to be writing and proves to be an independent invention, it would be one of very few independent inventions of writing in human history.
Rongorongo is a system of glyphs discovered in the 19th century on Easter Island that appears to be writing or proto-writing. Text A of the rongorongo corpus, also known as Tahua, is one of two dozen surviving texts.
Rongorongo is a system of glyphs discovered in the 19th century on Easter Island that appears to be writing or proto-writing. Text B of the rongorongo corpus, also known as Aruku Kurenga, is one of two dozen surviving rongorongo texts.
Rongorongo is a system of glyphs discovered in the 19th century on Easter Island that appears to be writing or proto-writing. Text C of the rongorongo corpus, also known as Mamari, is one of two dozen surviving rongorongo texts. It contains the Rapa Nui calendar.
Rongorongo is a system of glyphs discovered in the 19th century on Easter Island that appears to be writing or proto-writing. Text D of the rongorongo corpus, also known as Échancrée ("notched"), is one of two dozen surviving texts. This is the tablet that started Jaussen's collection.
Rongorongo is a system of glyphs discovered in the 19th century on Easter Island that appears to be writing or proto-writing. Text E of the rongorongo corpus, also known as Keiti, is one of two dozen known rongorongo texts, though it survives only in photographs and rubbings.
Text G of the rongorongo corpus, the smaller of two tablets located in Santiago and therefore also known as the Small Santiago tablet, is one of two dozen surviving rongorongo texts. It may include a short genealogy.
Text H of the rongorongo corpus, the larger of two tablets located in Santiago and therefore also known as the Great or Large Santiago tablet, is one of two dozen surviving rongorongo texts, and one of three recording the so-called "Grand Tradition".
Text N of the rongorongo corpus, the smaller of two tablets in Vienna and therefore also known as the Small Vienna tablet, is one of two dozen surviving rongorongo texts. It repeats much of the verso of tablet E.
Text Q of the rongorongo corpus, the smaller of two tablets in St. Petersburg and therefore also known as the Small St Petersburg tablet, is one of two dozen surviving rongorongo texts, and one of three recording the so-called "Grand Tradition".
Text P of the rongorongo corpus, the larger of two tablets in St. Petersburg and therefore also known as the Great or Large St Petersburg tablet, is one of two dozen surviving rongorongo texts, and one of three recording the so-called "Grand Tradition".
Text K of the rongorongo corpus, also known as the (Small) London tablet, is one of two dozen surviving rongorongo texts. It nearly duplicates the recto of tablet G.
Text T of the rongorongo corpus, also known as Honolulu tablet 1 or Honolulu 3629, is the only fluted tablet in the Honolulu collection and one of two dozen surviving rongorongo texts.
Text U of the rongorongo corpus, carved on a beam, also known as Honolulu tablet 2 or Honolulu 3628, is one of two dozen surviving rongorongo texts.
Text V of the rongorongo corpus, the Honolulu oar, also known as Honolulu tablet 3 or Honolulu 3622, may be one of two dozen surviving rongorongo texts. Its authenticity has been questioned.
Text Z of the rongorongo corpus, also known as Poike, is a palimpsest inscription that may be one of two dozen surviving rongorongo texts. The authenticity of the upper text is in question.
Text L of the rongorongo corpus, also known as (London) reimiro 2, is the smaller of two inscribed reimiro in London and one of two dozen surviving rongorongo texts.
Text M of the rongorongo corpus, the larger of two tablets in Vienna and therefore also known as the Large or Great Vienna tablet, is one of two dozen surviving rongorongo texts.
Text O of the rongorongo corpus, the Berlin tablet, is one of two dozen surviving rongorongo texts.
There have been numerous attempts to decipher the rongorongo script of Easter Island since its discovery in the late nineteenth century. As with most undeciphered scripts, many of the proposals have been fanciful. Apart from a portion of one tablet which has been shown to deal with a lunar calendar, none of the texts are understood, and even the calendar cannot actually be read. The evidence is weak that rongorongo directly represents the Rapa Nui language – that is, that it is a true writing system – and oral accounts report that experts in one category of tablet were unable to read other tablets, suggesting either that rongorongo is not a unified system, or that it is proto-writing that requires the reader to already know the text. Assuming that rongorongo is writing, there are three serious obstacles to decipherment: the small number of remaining texts, comprising only 15,000 legible glyphs; the lack of context in which to interpret the texts, such as illustrations or parallel texts which can be read; and the fact that the modern Rapa Nui language is heavily mixed with Tahitian and is unlikely to closely reflect the language of the tablets—especially if they record a specialized register such as incantations—while the few remaining examples of the old language are heavily restricted in genre and may not correspond well to the tablets either.
