Antoni Judit: „Ablakok Pápua Új-Guineára" (Távoli világok emberközelben II. Gödöllői Városi Múzeum, 2008)

footsteps in some way, and he was the person who bound the three of us together. At that point I myself was still animated by the hope that I would be able to travel to New Guinea sometime in the future in order to complete a number of tasks Bíró had left undone. We cherished this plan for a long time; it would have been a remarkable experience and a great pleasure for me to work with Emese out there. The thesis has been prepared - in English - and I hope that it will also be possible to publish it some day in order for it to fulfil its mission. On the other hand, the common plans all came to naught. We maintained contact with Emese mainly by letter, but we also met in person quite a few times on her visits to Hungary. Our last meeting happened in 2002, and it was quite by chance - she was sitting in my friend's and colleague's office when I dropped in unexpectedly. Emese stayed on in Papua New Guinea for a few years after her husband lan's death in 1998, but in 2001 moved back to England where her son and daughter grown up in the meantime - lived, and where she received medical treatment. She was seriously ill at that time, but she did not seem to be so and she refused to resign herself to her illness: she was full of plans and ideas for the future. She came home to again to see relatives, and also to find a museum to which she could safely offer the objects collected during the years she spent in Papua New Guinea. It was Emese's wish to find a place where her collection would find due estimation, would be catalogued, published and regularly be exhibited to the public, and would not be allowed to decay on the dusty shelves of a store room. After learning about the Oceanian collection of the Town Museum of Gödöllő, and about the Museum's approach to visitors and exhibitions, she decided that this place would meet all the necessary conditions. It was highly relevant that Eerenc Ignácz's collection was already held there, and that its best and most beautiful objects came not only from Emese's main collecting field, the Highlands of Papua New Guinea, but from different areas of the region, allowing the two collections to perfectly complement each other. Since Emese also attached good descriptions to most of the objects, the data could often be applied to both collections, thereby enhancing their value. Upon her return to England she had the artifacts, and the books necessary for their documentation, shipped to her house in Norham, a small village near the Scottish-English border. She continued to work on documenting the collection, and invited me to come over and help with this work. The earliest time best suited to both of us would have been May 2003. But fate decided otherwise and prevented us from ever working together, either among the Papuans or elsewhere: Emese died in March 2003. Her collection, books, notes and maps had to be transferred to Gödöllő, in accordance with her wishes. The objects were itemised, photographed and packed up in mid-November 2005 with the help of the museum, and the town of Gödöllő, but especially with the help of Emese's children. The collection consists of 368 items dating from the 1960s to the present day. The items are primarily not souvenirs manufactured for tourists, although a few of them belong to that category, but are rather accessories of everyday life and of the holidays, articles for personal use, and articles of traditional dress. All are products of local craftsmanship. Some of the objects were made and used in the central plateau of Papua New Guinea, while the other major group of items came from the north-eastern coastal district and from the Sepik region partly related to it. The remaining objects originate from the other areas of Papua New Guinea visited by Emese. The material from the Highlands is particularly interesting because this region became known to Europeans only as late as the 1930s, and still includes some of the most remote areas in Papua New Guinea. The principal appeal of the collection from the northeastern coast is the possibility of its comparison with Biro's material, while the section related to the Sepik region gives us an overall view of this extremely exciting region: a view hitherto unknown in our domestic collections. The prehistory of the island and its peoples New Guinea, the second largest island in the world, has only existed as an island for a relatively short time. The two big continental masses which may be considered the primeval antecedents of present-day Southeast Asia and Australia emerged during the last glacial epoch, sometime in the period between 150,000 and 50,000 years ago. One of these two continental shelves, the Sunda Shelf, joined present-day Borneo, Sumatra and Java to the Malay peninsula, while the 128