{"collection":"Sacred Texts -- Pacific Islander Religions","full_text_available":false,"graph_url":"https://unchartedknowledge.5gfusion.net/v2/api/page/sacred_texts_v1_pac_ei_ei51_htm/graph","html_url":"https://unchartedknowledge.5gfusion.net/v2/page/sacred_texts_v1_pac_ei_ei51_htm","id":"sacred_texts_v1_pac_ei_ei51_htm","license":"unknown_pending_legal_review","rights_basis":"sacred_texts_v1_preview_gate_primary_text_only; acquisition-method/ToS and compilation-copyright questions still open, not resolved by this gate","source":"sacred_texts_v1","source_url":"https://unchartedknowledge.5gfusion.net/browse/pac/ei/ei51.htm","summary":"This is a transcription and translation of an Easter Island (Rapa Nui) wooden tablet \u2014 a rongorongo inscription \u2014 collected by U.S. Navy Paymaster W. J. Thompson during an 1886 expedition and published in his 1891 report, presented here in both the original Rapa Nui language and English. The text is a liturgical chant structured as ten call-and-response stanzas, each asking \"What power has the Great King?\" and cataloguing his dominion over a different domain: cultivated plants, sea creatures, wild vegetation, deep-water fish, crops, animals, celestial bodies, human society, and insects. The genre is devotional praise poetry, closely parallel in form to hymns found in other Polynesian traditions, with a repeated acclamation that moves from attributing creative power to the king toward thanking him for enabling human beings to exploit or appreciate each domain. A distinctive feature is that the power claimed is simultaneously cosmological (the king creates stars, rain, and turtles) and practical (he grants humans the skill to catch fish or withstand insect attacks), merging divine sovereignty with everyday subsistence. The document also reproduces photographs of both sides of the physical tablet (catalog no. 129774, U.S. National Museum), making it a primary-source record of a specific artifact rather than a general ethnographic account. Readers interested in Rapa Nui religion, rongorongo tablets, or Polynesian oral/ritual literature will find this a rare bilingual transcription, though the translation's reliability depends entirely on Thompson's 19th-century informants.","tags":[],"text":null,"title":"Te Pito Te Henua, or Easter Island: Text of the Easter Island Tablet: Eaha To Ran Ariiki Kete","tradition":"Sacred Texts -- Pacific Islander Religions","translated_text":null,"word_count":927}