| Description |
This string figure represents the moon. According to the Awiakay myth about the origin of the sun and the moon (Hoenigman 2004: M011-1, M-038), both the sun and the moon used to be so close to the earth that people had to walk around bent over. It was very hot. When a woman went to pound sago, her husband stayed at home to look after the children. He cut off his daughter’s head, stuck it onto the spear and shot it towards the sun, so the sun went far away up into the sky, with a human head in it. Then the man cut out his daughter’s vulva, mounted it onto a spear and shot it up towards the moon. And so the moon rose. The girl’s head became the sun, and her vulva became the moon. Everybody could see a red thing in the morning as the sun rose up to the sky. In the evening they saw another red thing rising to the sky – this was the moon. But the moon was as hot as fire, so people fetched water and washed it. They cooled down its heat, now only the sun is hot.
String figure makers often prefer to make this string figure with a shorter string. If they feel the string is too long, they simply double it.
Image:
02: Darja Munbaŋgoapik showing the final design of tepa ‘moon’
Hoenigman, Darja. 2004. Awiakay book of myths. Fieldnotes: transcripts. Unpublished manuscript.
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