The Venus de Milo

Tu Tangata, Issue 22, 1 February 1985, Page 19

The Venus de Milo

In this latest of the Maori impact on world history series by Professor Titonui, the surprising link is discovered between our ‘Aryan’ brothers and sisters, the Greeks and Maori civilisation. (See book review on Edward Tregear’s ‘The Aryan Maori’ for supporting evidence.) Next issue. The new Italian renaissance and Tuwharetoa. '7-7

A recent discovery in suburban Athens has astonished archaeologists, historians, art critics, ethnologists, classicists, anthropologists, and many others, as well as annoying Greeks everywhere.

Early this year Greek police received a tip-off that an Athenian gangster was involved in an illicit arms deal. A specially trained anti-terrorist squad stormed his double garage at dawn one morning expecting to unearth a haul of the latest Soviet weaponry.

Instead they found only a pair of arms sculpted from marble the missing arms of the legendary Greek statue the Venus de Milo.

This news set the art world alight. The sculpture has always been upheld as a supreme example of the glory that was Greece and the splendour that was Rome, a monument to the great civilisation from which contemporary western culture sprang. An exquisite statue depicting the love goddess Venus in a state of near nudity, the sculpture is believed to date from the second century BC, a time when Greece was part of the great Roman Empire. The Venus de Milo has fired men’s imaginations for centuries, though this has had less to do with her lack of clothing than with her lack of arms.

At some time in her 3000-year history the arms have been broken off, and her ugly raw stumps remain a poignant mystery. What was she doing? Was she holding an urn? (If Greek sculpture is to be believed, Greek women held urns a lot.) Was she attempting modestly to cover her marble bosom? Or was she, as some philistines have suggested, stirring a mug of the well-known beverage?

But now, with the discovery of the missing limbs, we know. Her hands are twirling poi conclusive proof that intrepid Maori voyagers had penetrated the Mediterranean over two milennia ago.

The discovery has turned history upside down. Kumara plantations nestling between the olive groves and vineyards as the sun rises slowly over Mt Olym-

pus, Greek warriers performing their haka before paddling off to sack the great pa of Troy of course, at this present stage of our archaeological knowledge this must remain conjecture, but it is clear that the Maori impact on classical Greek culture was considerable by the time that the Venus was created, otherwise why portray a Greek goddess involved in such a typically Maori activity?

Questions remain unanswered, however. Why is there no mention in either Greek or Maori tradition of this meeting between two great civilisations?

It is possible that the ancient Greeks in a nationalist cultural revolution rose up and destroyed all signs of the benefits the Maoris had bestowed upon them. (This would explain why the statue’s arms were knocked off.) As for the Maoris, it is quite likely that they weren’t too impressed by Greece. They paddled off back home and, until the 28 Battalion campaign in 1941, forgot all about the place.