Tomenika's Text

The author of this short paper had a difficult task: to analyse the glyphs and subject known as Tomenika's text, and then to read it--as much a is possible. [t is a cursive text, made on paper in pen and ink. It was found in the village of Hanga Roa by the famous English scientist. Katherine Routledge (1919) during her expedition to Easter Island in 1914-15. She wrote: "We were shown one day in the village a piece of paper taken from a Chilean manuscript book. on which were somewhat roughly drawn a number of signs. some of them similar to those already known, others different from any we had seen. They were found to have been derived from an old man, known as Tomenika. He was the last acquainted with an inferior kind of rongorongo, known as the tau. but now he was ill and confined to the leper colony."