Sotheby's expects a "rare and exceptional prow" off a 200 year old Maori waka to fetch around €350,000 ($NZ780,000) when it is put up for auction in Paris later this month.
The "waka tete" prow, a tattooed head about 44cm high, intricately carved in wood with stone tools, will be sold on June 17 by Sotheby's auctioneers.
It was originally acquired by Major-General Horatio Robley in New Zealand in 1864, and is said to be older and more beautiful than one of a similar style in the Gisborne Museum. The Gisborne prow was carved with iron tools by Rakaruhi Rukupo around 1840.
According to the auction notes, the piece comes from the collection of Texan dealer in tribal art, Steven G Alpert.
It was known to have been in the New Zealand collection of a Frank Peak, in 1920.
"What is offered here is a true taonga," said a Sotheby's expert, Julian Harding.
"Here is a great work of Maori art which speaks powerfully to us, across some 200 years, of another time, another place, another way of being human."
