collections are in high demand by academic researchers and students, and Pacific collections such as those from Samoa are also well used. Other collections, particularly those from Egypt and Greece, were obtained through the Museum's relationship in the 1920s with the Egyptian Exploration Society and the British Museum. Taonga Māori (Ethnology) The museum houses a large collection of Māori and Pacific Island artefacts, including Hotunui, a large whare rūnanga (carved meeting house) built in 1878 at Thames, and Te Toki-a-Tapiri, a Māori war canoe from 1830 carved by Te Waaka Perohuka and Raharuhi Rukupō. Within New Zealand, the Taonga Māori collection is of equal significance to that of the national museum, Te Papa Tongarewa. It is a cultural and research resource of the first order, having the most comprehensive range of types and periods of material and is essential for the whole spectrum of studies in Māori art and material culture. The collection dates from the early decades of the founding of the Museum; its focus has been on acquiring first-quality 'masterworks' from all tribal and geographic areas of New Zealand, as well as representative material-culture items. The Museum's collection of ethnic musical instruments is the largest in the country, and is one of the most important in the world. Pacific The Museum's comprehensive Pacific collection has a range of arts and material culture from tropical Polynesia, Melanesia and Micronesia. The collection is diverse both geographically and in type of material, covering all the cultures of the Pacific, from West Papua, north-east to Hawaii and south-east to Easter Island. Objects are collected for their intrinsic cultural or artistic importance, and also for their place within a temporal or geographic range by virtue of the relevance of their maker, who may be anonymous. World Ethnology The World (Foreign Ethnology) collection is diverse, the largest and most significant of its type in the country. It aims to reflect a well-balanced range of arts and artefacts of non-Western, -Pacific, and -Māori cultures, and it is an important collection in terms of its ability to portray the diversity of world cultures, in particular that of South-east Asia, because of that area's "prehistoric links with Polynesian cultures and its contemporary regional political significance". Social and War History The War History collection was established in 1920, following the end of the First World War and spurred on by the decision to build a new museum as