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OBJECT HISTORY
octopus, were discovered in 1879 by Humphrey Gifford
in a storage room in New Bedford, Massachusetts.
The striking resemblance in all respects of the
Peabody kavakava to the d’Azy fi gure suggests that
they should be attributed to the same sculptor.
THE CRANiAl oRNAMENT:
THE MYTHiCAl oCTopUS
The heads of Easter Island fi gures are often decorated
with an animal or anthropomorphic image. The
placement of this glyph on the most sacred part of
the person demonstrates its symbolic importance.
Oral tradition recorded on Easter Island between
1864 and 1935 remains mute on the signifi cance and
meaning of these symbols, but it is possible that they
represent a particular social group (perhaps a lineage
or association) similar to the tapao, a tutelary (totem)
animal in the Society Islands.
The d’Azy kavakava has a rendering of an octopus
masterfully sculpted onto its head in low relief in the
style associated with old Easter Island examples. From
Hawaii to New Zealand and Easter Island, the octopus
was a primordial mythological entity whose recognition
predates the Polynesian diaspora. In the Society
Islands, this mythical octopus was called Tumu
ra’i fenua. According to a creation myth recorded on
Bora Bora in 1824, before the world took its current
shape, the tentacles of the octopus kept the earth fi rmly
fastened to the sky. When the octopus was killed
and its tentacles were cut, its body fell into the ocean
and the island of Tubuai (Austral Islands) was created.
For the ancient Hawaiians, the octopus, the only
survivor of the worlds that disappeared at the beginning
of creation, was the incarnation of the creator
god Kanaloa (Tangaroa in the Society Islands), master
of the netherworld and of magic. It also was the
mythical giant octopus that enabled the hero navigator
Kupe to discover New Zealand at the end of a
chase that had commenced in the legendary land of
Hawaiki (possibly the Society Islands).
Easter Island oral tradition, which was recorded
relatively late, mentions the octopus only anecdotally,
but representations of it sculpted in wood or etched
into stone attest to the animal’s mythical importance
prior to the population’s conversion to Christianity.
Eleven of them are etched into fl at rocks at Ava o
Kiri on the island’s north coast. The stylistic uniformity
these petroglyphs display demonstrates that they
were the work of a single sculptor-priest, who apparently
found special inspiration in the cephalopod. An