The Deity Figure from Rarotonga is an important wooden sculpture of a male god that was made on the

Pacific The Pacific Ocean is the largest and deepest of Earth's five oceanic divisions. It extends from the Arctic Ocean in the north to the Southern Ocean (or, depending on definition, to Antarctica) in the south, and is bounded by the continen ...

island of

Rarotonga Rarotonga is the largest and most populous of the Cook Islands. The island is volcanic, with an area of , and is home to almost 75% of the country's population, with 13,007 of a total population of 17,434. The Cook Islands' Parliament buildings a ...

in the

Cook Islands ) , image_map = Cook Islands on the globe (small islands magnified) (Polynesia centered).svg , capital = Avarua , coordinates = , largest_city = Avarua , official_languages = , lan ...

. The

cult image In the practice of religion, a cult image is a human-made object that is venerated or worshipped for the deity, spirit or daemon that it embodies or represents. In several traditions, including the ancient religions of Egypt, Greece and Rome ...

was given to English missionaries in the early nineteenth century as the local population converted to

Christianity Christianity is an Abrahamic monotheistic religion based on the life and teachings of Jesus of Nazareth. It is the world's largest and most widespread religion with roughly 2.38 billion followers representing one-third of the global pop ...

. It was eventually bought by the

British Museum The British Museum is a public museum dedicated to human history, art and culture located in the Bloomsbury area of London. Its permanent collection of eight million works is among the largest and most comprehensive in existence. It docum ...

in 1911.

Provenance

The wooden figure was made on the island of Rarotonga in the late eighteenth century or early nineteenth century. After Captain

James Cook James Cook (7 November 1728 Old Style date: 27 October – 14 February 1779) was a British explorer, navigator, cartographer, and captain in the British Royal Navy, famous for his three voyages between 1768 and 1779 in the Pacific Ocean an ...

's first sighting of the archipelago in 1773, Europeans began to visit the Cook Islands in the early nineteenth century as part of the

colonisation Colonization, or colonisation, constitutes large-scale population movements wherein migrants maintain strong links with their, or their ancestors', former country – by such links, gain advantage over other inhabitants of the territory. When ...

of territories in the Pacific. This went hand-in-hand with mass conversion of the population to

. At that time British

missionaries A missionary is a member of a religious group which is sent into an area in order to promote its faith or provide services to people, such as education, literacy, social justice, health care, and economic development.Thomas Hale 'On Being a Mi ...

were very active in the area and this idol was probably given up to the

London Missionary Society The London Missionary Society was an interdenominational evangelical missionary society formed in England in 1795 at the instigation of Welsh Congregationalist minister Edward Williams. It was largely Reformed in outlook, with Congregational miss ...

after 1827, when they set up a mission on Rarotonga. The LMS initially loaned their important collection of Polynesian sculptures to the British Museum but later sold it to the national collection in 1911.

Description

The small statue of the god is carved from highly polished ironwood (''

Casuarina equisetifolia ''Casuarina equisetifolia'', common names ''Coastal She-oak'' or ''Horsetail She-oak'' (sometimes referred to as the Australian pine tree or whistling pine tree outside Australia), is a she-oak species of the genus ''Casuarina''. The native ...

''). Shown standing upright, small

anthropomorphic Anthropomorphism is the attribution of human traits, emotions, or intentions to non-human entities. It is considered to be an innate tendency of human psychology. Personification is the related attribution of human form and characteristics t ...

figurines are carved in high relief around the chest and arms.

Coir Coir (), also called coconut fibre, is a natural fibre extracted from the outer husk of coconut and used in products such as floor mats, doormats, brushes, and mattresses. Coir is the fibrous material found between the hard, internal shell ...

bindings along the arm cover remains of a cloth and feathers that would have once been worn by the deity. The exact meaning and name of this masculine

idol Idol or Idols may refer to: Religion and philosophy * Cult image, a neutral term for a man-made object that is worshipped or venerated for the deity, spirit or demon that it embodies or represents * Murti, a point of focus for devotion or medit ...

remains unknown but, based on its artistic style (particularly the distinctive formation of the eyes), it has been attributed to a workshop on the island of Rarotonga. Only one other similar figure, from the

George Ortiz George Ortiz (1927–2013) was a collector who assembled what is considered to be one of the "finest collection of antiquities in private hands". Biography George Ortiz was born in Paris May 10, 1927. His father, Jorge Ortiz Linares, was Ambas ...

collection, is known.

References

{{reflist 18th-century sculptures 19th-century sculptures Ethnographic objects in the British Museum Artefacts from Africa, Oceania and the Americas in the British Museum Oceanian sculpture Wooden sculptures in the United Kingdom Cook Islands culture Rarotonga Sculptures in the British Museum Sculptures of gods Cult images Cook Islands–United Kingdom relations

Provenance

Description

See also

Further reading

References