Patoko offerings stand

Found in a temple on the Gambier Islands, this object was confiscated by the missionaries of the Picpus Congregation. If it managed to resist the auto-da-fé* and generalised destruction of sanctuaries and objects of worship, perpetrated in the 19th century under the guise of evangelisation, it is because it served as evidence, as did all “idols” or “demon remains”, as the missionaries themselves termed them. Thus preserved, these representations of deities or venerated ancestors have reached Europe with almost no ethnographical information. The use of this artefact therefore remains a mystery. It could be a stand or display for offerings with four arms resting on a cylinder that in turn stands on a cone-shaped object. It was long considered to be a device for keeping food away from rodents. Later, it was thought that each hand, outstretched to the sky, might have symbolically carried the skull of an enemy killed in combat. It is most likely that it was dedicated to Tu, the god of war.