On the left-hand side of the display case, the oldest known tablet is shown next to the cord of finely twisted hair, around 15 m long, which surrounded it in June 1869 when it was handed over to the Bishop of Tahiti, Mgr Tepano Jaussen, by the inhabitants of Rapa Nui through Father Gaspar Zuhmbohm. The missionaries see in this gesture, in addition to allegiance to the Catholic Church, proof of the little value now accorded to the kohau roŋoroŋo that no Rapa Nui inhabitant seems to be able to read any more. They do, however, perceive the value of the hair cord, a sacred material throughout Polynesia. They deduce that this is the true gift, of which the tablet known to specialists as the “Echancrée” is merely the support. In Polynesia, however, objects wrapped in sacred materials such as hair and tapa (a material also found on the cord) are never neutral. On the contrary, the ethnography of the region recurrently emphasizes their importance, in particular their role in mediating the forces specific to the world of the living and that of the dead and the gods in ritual contexts.

The wood from which the Echancrée is fashioned, Podocarpus type (Orliac and Orliac, 2008), does not come from Rapa Nui. It could be driftwood. The BRAVHO 14 C Lab at the University of Bologna recently dated it to the late 15th or very early 16th century (Ferrara et al., 2024). These elements (exogenous and ancient material), as well as the fragmentary nature of the tablet, truncated at both ends and notched to accommodate a ligature, or its gift to the highest representative of the Catholic Church on the island shortly after his conversion, also point to an object of great value, like others found in Polynesia.

The changes over time revealed by the inscriptions also contribute to this interpretation. Above all, they help specialists such as Paul Horley (2021) to better understand how these tablets were made, used and reused when they were still in use. The scalloped face was carefully polished before engraving. It features 8 lines of finely incised glyphs. The rougher reverse has only six lines of glyphs, larger and coarser than on the A side. It is likely that two distinct scribes, perhaps reflecting two different periods of use, produced them.

The coarser side also reveals an indentation. In the center of the line of pictographs that runs along the smaller of the large sides, there are pre-incisions that do not correspond to the glyphs finally inscribed there. It seems, according to Paul Horley, that the scribe omitted a passage, which he later reinstated. In any case, he eventually superimposed new pictograms on the pre-incised glyphs. This type of correction is common in certain writing systems. The presence of pre-incisions illustrates the two-stage engraving process followed by Rapa Nui scribes. First, glyph outlines were quickly traced. These superficial inscriptions were then meticulously incised deeper or replaced by perfectly legible signs.

Paul Horley also highlights a passage in the center of the most carefully incised face, the rhythm of which leads him to believe that it could be a kind of magic formula rather than a chant or recitation, which are frequent in Polynesian liturgical practices. The sequence of six groups of just a few signs, repeated several times, suggests the articulation of brief, repetitive sounds, which are known to have a strong impact in the region's oral practices.

Carved from a European ash (Fraxinus sp.) rowboat oar, the large tablet known in specialist literature as “Tahua”, after the artist who carved it (Jaussen 1886), and sometimes also called “La Rame”, bears witness to the end of kohau roŋoroŋo production. By this time, their meaning had probably already been lost, notably as a result of the dramatic depopulation of the island caused by disease and then deportation to guano quarries in Peru, between the late 18th and mid-19th centuries.

This tablet, which bears few traces of use, has been cut in its proximal part, amputating the text (Orliac and Orliac 2008, p. 251-252). Each side has 8 lines of signs. According to Paul Horley, the structured sequences found on them, as on that of Aruku Kureŋa, suggest that they encode a rhyming song.

Some of the glyphs on “La Rame” also refer explicitly to the petroglyphs found on Rapa Nui. These similarities point to a kinship between the two inscription systems, in wood and stone.

Named “Aruku Kureŋa” after the artist who inscribed it (Jaussen 1886), this tablet is asymmetrical in overall shape and contains almost 1,300 glyphs. It is made of mako'i wood (Thespesia populnea) (Orliac and Orliac 2008). Its convex face is glossy and features particularly meticulous inscriptions. On the reverse, the slightly concave surface is more uneven. It appears to have been scraped and burned to erase an ancient text, which was then replaced by new glyphs. The convex A side features 12 lines of pictograms, carefully delineated by the scribe before they were inscribed. Side B has 10 more random lines.

This intact tablet is also carved from mako'i wood (Thespesia populnea). Like its predecessors, it bears the name of the artist whom the missionaries surveyed (Jaussen 1886). It contains around 800 glyphs, spread over 14 lines on each side. It is distinguished by its patina of use and lustrous appearance, suggesting prolonged ceremonial use (Orliac and Orliac 2008, p. 255-256). According to Paul Horley (2021), it is the only known tablet to feature a lunar calendar.

Snuffbox

This snuffbox appears to be carved from a late roŋoroŋo tablet. It may have been made for a Western visitor to the islands or by one of these travelers. It entered French public collections thanks to a purchase by the Musée de l'Homme in 1962.

The four original tablets on display belong to the collection of the Congregation of the Sacred Hearts of Jesus and Mary (SS.CC.) in Rome.
Apart from the Echancrée, which was given by the Rapanui to Mgr Tepano Jaussen in 1869, through the intermediary of Father G. Zuhmbohm, the other three were acquired by Father H. Roussel or Father G. Zuhmbohm in a very short space of time, between 1869 and 1870. The missionaries actively sought them out among the island's inhabitants. They joined the collection of Mgr T. Jaussen in Tahiti on October 13, 1870, were sent to the Institut de France in 1887 and joined the Congregation's Mother House in 1888.

At the musée du quai Branly - Jacques Chirac, most of the collections originating from Rapa Nui (Easter Island) come from the Franco-Belgian Métraux-Lavachery mission (1934-1935). This mission, which took place during the same period of scientific research as others, the best-known of which was undoubtedly the Dakar-Djibouti mission (1931-1933), focused on Rapa Nui, where an interdisciplinary team led by Swiss ethnologist Alfred Métraux and Belgian archaeologist Henri Lavachery spent 13 months. On their return, the collections joined those of the Musée d'Ethnographie du Trocadéro and the Royal Museums of Art and History in Brussels.

A volcanic island measuring 164 km2, Rapa Nui was one of the last Polynesian islands to be populated, between 800 and 1200 AD. Located more than 3,000 km west of the coast of Chile, to which it has belonged since 1888, and more than 2,000 km east of Pitcairn, the Polynesian island to which it is geographically closest, Rapa Nui owes its uniqueness to this relative isolation, as well as to a number of environmental and historical factors that have been widely discussed in specialized literature. Depending on the discipline, researchers have described it as a model of the effects of climate disruption, over-exploitation of resources or the violence of colonial and slave-owning practices in the region. From a cultural point of view, however, Rapa Nui remains fundamentally Polynesian. The language spoken here, the famous statues erected on its shores, the relationship with birds demonstrated by certain seasonal rituals, and the social hierarchy described by the first Europeans to visit, all explicitly echo what can be observed elsewhere, including in what is now French Polynesia.

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