Rongorongo text Z

A small light-weight piece, 10.7 × 5.8 × 2.7 cm, of unknown wood and darkened with age.

In 1937 José Paté discovered this tablet by the foundations of the ruins of a stone house near ahu Mahatua, the home village of Metoro Tauꞌa Ure, Bishop Jaussen's informant, at the base of Poike Volcano, near the cave Aka o Keke that contains a few crude rongorongo-type petroglyphs.

The authenticity of the piece is immediately suspect because it is not boustrophedon, typical of early forgeries.

However, Fischer (1997) suspects that it may be a palimpsest, that someone had carved an imitative inscription over an authentic but by then illegible text, and that it was somehow forgotten rather than sold.

Fischer (1997) reports that in strong light four lines of imitative (crude, non-boustrophedon) script are visible on both sides, but that "in indirect light there are fainter traces of smaller rongorongo glyphs in six or seven lines on each side."