This paper aims to improve documentation of the rongorongo tablet VI 4878 from the Berlin Ethnological Museum. For the first time (to the best of our knowledge), we present the detailed digital photographs of the entire artifact almost at the original scale. The computer enhancement of these images helped to produce improved tracings that surpass the tracings published by Adolf Bastian (1883), Thomas Barthel (1958) and Steven Fischer (1997) by the number of documented glyphs. Analysis of the parallel passages shows that the Berlin tablet shares glyph sequences with so-called “Great Tradition” (Large Santiago/Large and Small St. Petersburg tablets), as well as with Aruku Kurenga tablet. Some particular sign groups from the Berlin tablet can be seen on the tablets Tahua, Echancrée, the Small and the Large Washington tablets.

Cet article vise à améliorer la documentation de la tablette rongorongo VI 4878 du Musée ethnologique de Berlin. Pour la première fois (à notre connaissance), nous présentons des photographies numériques détaillées de l’artefact complet à l'échelle quasi-originale. L’amélioration de la qualité de ces images sur ordinateur a contribué à produire des tracés d’un plus grand nombre de glyphes que ceux publiés par Adolf Bastian (1883), Thomas Barthel (1958) et Steven Fischer (1997). L'analyse des passages parallèles montre que la tablette de Berlin partage les séquences glyphiques de ce que l’on appelle la "Grande Tradition" (tablettes Grand Santiago / tablettes du Grand et Petit Saint-Pétersbourg), ainsi qu'avec celle d’Aruku Kurenga. Certains groupes particuliers de signes de la tablette de Berlin se trouvent aussi sur les tablettes Tahua, Échancrée, et sur la Petite et la Grande tablettes de Washington.

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The rongorongo script of Easter Island (Rapa Nui) is a unique writing system developed in Polynesia. The oral traditions of the islanders « assert that Hotu-Matua, the first king, possessed the knowledge of this written language, and brought with him to the island sixty-seven tablets containing allegories, traditions, genealogical tables and proverbs relating to the land from which he had migrated » (Thomson, 1891: 514). However, the search of possible trans-insular origins of the script did not reveal any results supporting the external origin of the script. At the same time, the iconography of rongorongo signs pronouncedly matches the Rapa Nui petroglyphs (Fedorova, 1983: 45, fig. 2; Lee, 1992: 126-128; Macri, 1996: 184, fig. 19; Horley and Lee, 2008: 114, fig. 6), providing the evidence to Easter Island development of the script.

The existence of inscribed objects was first witnessed in 1864 by the first Rapa Nui missionary Eugène Eyraud (Fischer 1997: 12), but it was Tepano Jauss...