Hoa Hakananai’a is a moai, a statue from Easter Island. It was taken from Orongo, Easter Island (Rapa Nui) in 1868 by the crew of a British ship and is now in the British Museum in London.

It has been described as a “masterpiece” and among the finest examples of Easter Island sculpture. Though relatively small, it is considered to be typical of the island’s statue form, but distinguished by carvings added to the back, ᴀssociated with the island’s birdman cult.

The statue was identified as Hoa Hakananai’a by islanders at the time it was removed; the British crew first recorded the name in the form ‘Hoa-haka-nana-ia’ or ‘Hoa-haka-nama-ia’.  It has been variously translated from the Rapa Nui language to mean ‘breaking wave’, ‘surfriding’,  ‘surfing fellow’,  ‘master wave-breaker’,  ‘lost or stolen friend’,  ‘stolen friend’, ‘hidden friend’  or ‘doing robberies/mockeries friend’.

In 1868, Hoa Hakananai’a was standing erect, part buried inside a freestone ceremonial “house” in the Orongo village at the south-western tip of the island. It faced towards an extinct volcanic crater known as Rano Kau, with its back turned to the sea. It may have been made for this location, or first erected elsewhere before being moved to where it was found.

The statue is thought to date from 1000– 1200 CE. No Easter Island statues have been scientifically dated, but statue making in general is said to have begun by at least 1000 CE,  and occurred mostly between 1300 and 1500 CE. Manufacture is said to have ended by 1600 CE, when islanders began to topple them. The Y on the chin and the clavicles are rare on Easter Island statues, and said to be late innovations.

Typical of Easter Island moai, Hoa Hakananai’a features a heavy brow, blocky face with prominent nose and jutting chin, nipples, thin, lightly angled arms down the sides and hands reaching towards the stomach, which is near the base. It has a raised Y-shape in the centre of the chin, eyes hollowed out in a way characteristic of statues erected elsewhere on the island on ceremonial ahu platforms, and long, rectangular stylised ears. A line around the base of the neck is interpreted as representing the clavicles; there is a semi-circular hollow for the suprasternal notch.

Most statues on Easter Island are of a reddish tuff,  but Hoa Hakananai’a is made from a block of dark grey-brown flow lava. Though commonly described as basalt, quarried near to where the statue was found, there is no record of petrological analysis to confirm this.  It stands 2.42 metres (7.9 feet) high, is 96 cm (3.15 ft) across, and weighs 4.2 tonnes.

The base of the statue, now concealed in a modern plinth, may originally have been flat, and subsequently narrowed, or was rough and tapering from the start.

In its original form, the back is thought to have been plain, apart from a maro, a belt or girdle, which consists of three raised lines and a circle above, and an M on a vertical line below. Near the base are slight indications of ʙuттocks.

The top of the head is smooth and flat, and could originally have supported a pukao, a cylindrical stone “hat”. A flat round stone found near the site of the statue may have been such a hat,  or, if the base was flat, a bed plate on which the statue once stood. It has been suggested that the statue was originally erected so that the top of the head would have been horizontal.

The back of the statue, between the maro and the top of the head, is covered with relief carvings added at an unknown time after the statue was made. They are similar in style to petroglyphs on the native rock around the Orongo village, where they are more common than anywhere else on the island.

Either side and above the ring on the maro are two facing birdmen (tangata manu), stylised human figures with beaked heads said to represent frigatebirds. Above these, in the centre of the statue’s head, is a smaller bird said to be a sooty tern (manutara). Either side of this is a ceremonial dance paddle (ao), a symbol of male power and prestige. Along the edge of the left ear is a third paddle, because of its smaller size possibly a rapa rather than an ao, and on the right ear a row of four vulva symbols (komari). Y-shaped lines drop down from the top of the head.

When first seen by Europeans, the carvings were painted red against a white background. The paint was totally or mostly washed off when the statue was rafted out to HMS Topaze.

Precise reading of these designs varies. The birdmen are popularly interpreted as Makemake, a fertility god and chief god of the birdman cult. This cult, said to have replaced the older statue cult, was recorded by early European visitors.

It involved an annual compeтιтion to retrieve the first egg laid by migrating sooty terns. The contest was held at Orongo, and the winning man became Makemake’s representative for the following year. The last ceremony is thought to have been held in 1866 or 1867.

Hoa Hakananai’a was found in November 1868 by officers and crew from the British Royal Navy ship HMS Topaze. When first seen, it was buried up to about half its height or even more. It was dug out, dragged down from Rano Kau on a sledge, and rafted out to the ship.

It was pH๏τographed while Topaze was docked in Valparaíso, Chile, from back and front. At that time Commodore Richard Ashmore Powell, captain of the Topaze, wrote to the British Admiralty offering the statue, along with a second, smaller moai known as Hava.

HMS Topaze arrived in Plymouth, England, on 16 August 1869. The Admiralty offered the statue to Queen Victoria, who proposed that it should be given to the British Museum. It was mounted in a plinth and exhibited outside the museum’s front entrance, beneath the portico. During the Second World War, it was taken inside, where it mostly remained until 1966. In that year it was moved to the museum’s then Department of Ethnography, which had separate premises in Burlington Gardens. It returned to the British Museum’s main site in 2000, when it was exhibited on a new, higher plinth in the Great Court, before moving to its present location in the Wellcome Trust Gallery (Room 24: Living and Dying).

Hoa Hakananai’a was selected by British Museum director Neil MacGregor for his A History of the World in 100 Objects.

In 2010 it was the target of a protest against BP’s handling of the Deepwater Horizon oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico.The Rapa Nui people consider the moai to have been taken without permission. In November 2018 Laura Alarcón Rapu, the Governor of Easter Island, asked the British Museum to return the statue. The museum agreed to discuss a loan of the statue with representatives of the people. Keeper of the Department of Africa, Oceania and the Americas at the British Museum, Lissant Bolton, visited Easter Island in June 2019. Leonardo Pakarati has filmed a documentary Te Kuhane o te tupuna or “The spirit of the ancestors”, in which Hoa Hakananai’a is a symbol stolen from Rapa Nui, whose spirit or mana must be recovered to restore welfare to the island.