A MUSEUM BULLETIN.

Otago Witness, Issue 2983, 17 May 1911, Page 4

A MUSEUM BULLETIN.

NEW ZEALAND BURIAL CHESTS AND A SCARIFYING KNIFE. (Feom Ottk Own Cobbespondent.) WELLINGTON, May 10. An interesting bulletin (No. 3) has just been issued from the Colonial Museum. It contains illustrated articles on the Maori pa at the New Zealand Exhibition, notes on. the Maori art of weaving cloaks, capes, and kilte, tattoo patterns in the Cook Islands, figures carved in pumice rock found in the Chatham Islands, and other subjects. One specially interesting article deals with a carved burial chest found near Hokianga. The Dominion Museum has now acquired eight of these carved chests from the same neighbourhood. The best specimen is 3ft llin in height, and 16in in diameter. The interior is hollowed to contain the prepared bones, and the cover is ingeniously fitted to fasten with a curved wooden peg or pin. There are 6ome remarkable points in the carving on these chests, one suggesting .a knowledge of the Caesarian section. Another very remarkable point about the carving is that the ears are pierced through the middle horizontally by a cylindrical wooden plug, the lobe not being bored for suspension of an eardrop ornament. This is quite contrary to any known Maori custom. The type of face represented in all these burial chests is quite different from any MaoTi work that has come down to us. A number of similar chests are in the hands of private collectors, and there are some in the Auckland Museum. The bulletin contains a photograph of a most beautifully carved "maripi" or scarifying knife that has been in the Salem Museum, United States, for over 100 years. It was presented by a Captain William Richardson, together with other specimens, on his return from a whaling voyage. Mr. Hamilton says he probably obtained it from the Bay of Islands. The scarifying part is composed of sharks' teeth. Such knives were used at tangis for cutting and lacerating the flesh in token of grief. The custom is of great antiquity, and was forbidden in the regulations prescribed for the Jews in Leviticus and Job.