Rapa Nui tattooing

Tepano, photograph by Madame Hoare
Sketch by Hjalmar Stolpe of Tepanos tattoos.
Photo of Tepano by Oscar Ekholm.
Tepano, a man from Rapa Nui with tattoos on his face. Left picture is photographed in the 1870s by Sophia Hoare in Tahiti. Middle is an engraving after sketches by Hjalmar Stolpe in Tahiti 1884 during the Vanadis expedition, and right is a photo by Oscar Ekholm in 1884. It is very hard to see any traces of the tattoos on the right picture, something Stolpe also writes in his article 1899.[1]
The 2 Iuhi needles donated to the Field Museum from the Fuller collection
Tattooing on woman, Easter Island, 1886

As in other Polynesian islands, Rapa Nui tattooing had a fundamentally spiritual connotation. (Rapa Nui, Easter Island.) In some cases the tattoos were considered a receptor for divine strength or mana. They were manifestations of the Rapa Nui culture. Priests, warriors and chiefs had more tattoos than the rest of the population, as a symbol of their hierarchy. Both men and women were tattooed to represent their social class.[2][3]

  1. ^ Stolpe, Hjalmar (1899). "Über die Tätowirung der Oster-Insulaner." Abhandlungen und Berichte des Königlischen. Zoologischen und Antropologisch-Ethnographischen Museums zu Dresden 8, no. 6.
  2. ^ Kjellgren, Eric (2002). Splendid isolation: art of Easter Island; [published in conjunction with the Exhibition Splendid Isolation - Art of Easter Island, held at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, from December 11, 2001, to August 4, 2002]. New York: Metropolitan Museum of Art [u.a.]
  3. ^ Krutak, Lars (2005). "Sacred Skin: Easter Island Ink". Retrieved 2018-07-11.