93 FIG. 2: Ivory figurine. Probably from Tonga. Carved from a single piece of whale ivory. H: 11.2 cm. Horace Beck Collection donated by Louis Clarke in 1925. Photo: Jocelyne Dudding. © MAA 1925.336. FIG. 4: Twinned goddess figure. Collected in Viti Levu, Fiji. Whale ivory figure with three-ply plaited coir cord. L: 17.8 cm. Given to Sir A. Gordon by J. B. Thurston, 1875 –97. Photo: Jocelyne Dudding. © MAA Z 2740. FIG. 3 (left): Twinned goddess figure. Collected in Viti Levu, Fiji. Whale ivory figure with glass beads strung on fiber cord. H: 12.2 cm (without cord). Presented to Sir Arthur Gordon, 1876. Photo: Jocelyne Dudding. © MAA 1955.247. siderable antiquity. A single ivory figurine within MAA’s Fijian collection (fig. 2) is similar in style to one collected during Captain James Cook’s visits to Tonga in the 1770s (Kaeppler 1978: 207). Stylistically these figurines are similar to the three extant twinned ivory figures collected in Fiji in the 1870s, of which two are in MAA’s collections (figs. 3 and 4) and the third at the Marischal Museum at the University of Aberdeen (Hooper 2006: 248). Two female figures are depicted standing back to back, conjoined at the buttocks, on top of a suspension hook. It is likely that they originally represented Topukulu and Naufanua, the twinned rain goddesses from the Tongan island of ‘Eua (Clunie 2013: 55). One has a particularly well-documented provenance (fig. 3). Of Tongan origin, it was recorded as being in Sabeto in western Viti Levu and transferred to Nadi thirty to fifty years before being collected in 1876 (Larsson 1960: 25–28; Clunie ibid). Once in Nadi the figure was possessed by Nalilavatu, wife of the principal Nadi god, and kept in a spirit house, where she was said to talk in a squeaky voice
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