Magazines - Tribal Art Autumn/Winter 2008

(Excerpt from the article by Nicolas Cauwe)

In 1932, Paul Rivet director of the Musée de l'Homme in Paris, became aware of the work of an amateur linguist, who pointed out strange resemblances between the symbols engraved on the wooden rongorongo tablets of Easter Island and the "writing" of the Indus Valley civilization, which flourished between the 5th–3rd millennia before present in what is now Pakistan. While the idea of such a relationship is widely considered fantastical today, it was deemed worthy of consideration by some in the 1930s. Rivet decided to organize an expedition to the South Pacific to gain some clarity on the matter. He shared this ambition with Belgian ethnologist Henri Lavachery and, in 1934, they embarked together on one of the most famous Easter Island research expeditions ever undertaken. Known as the "Franco-Belgian Expedition," its worthwhile results had little in common with the delusional ideas that gave rise to it. The voyage also resulted in the relocation to Brussels of one of the famous monumental Easter Island stone statues known as moai, which was not removed illegally but rather was a gift of the Chilean government to Belgium. France was offered the same, but ethnologist Alfred Métraux, who represented the Musée de l'Homme at the time, requested a large but more manageably sized stone head, found on the royal north coast beach of Anakena. Unfettered by such practicality, Lavachery persuaded Captain Van de Sande, commander of the Mercator, the Belgian merchant marine ship that came to pick up the expedition, to take his six-ton sculpture aboard. The operation was far from easy and was nearly aborted, but Lavachery's tenacity, as well as that of the sailors working on the project, ultimately prevailed. In May of 1935, after more than four months at sea, the Mercator was pulled into the marina at the Brussels yacht club by a tugboat and unloaded its precious cargo.

The event was significant at the time and the subject of considerable press coverage. Lavachery, "L'Homme de Pâques" (The Man of Easter), even got his caricature on the cover of Pourquoi Pas? magazine. Only fifteen days after the docking of the Mercator, on May 28, 1935, ministers, intellectuals, artists, and the general public thronged to the Musée Royal d'Art et d'Histoire to admire the marvels brought back from Easter Island.
The colossal stone sculpture was the center of the spectacle but very little was known about it. Lavachery had scrupulously made note of the location from which it had been taken, which was in the vicinity of Hanga Roa (the only village on Easter Island), as well as of the names that the indigenous people gave the impressive effigy. Three names had been recorded: Hanga One One, Pohu, and Puhakononga. While their significance was at least partially obscure, it was known that the Easter Islanders believed the statue to be a representation of a god of tuna fishermen.