In addition to its beautiful gardens, Dumbarton Oaks in Washington, D.C., houses an impressive collections of Byzantine and pre-Columbian artifacts. It is also home to a fertility idol known as the Birthing Figure (sometimes the Dumbarton Oaks Birthing Figure), which may be familiar to fans of Indiana Jones. Carved out of scapolite and measuring about 20 centimeters (8 inches) in height, the idol depicts a squatting woman in the middle of childbirth. The sculpture was considered to be of Aztec origin, circa 900–1521. It was thought to represent Tlazolteotl, an Aztec…
