ARTIFACT Chachapoyan Fertility Idol Origin Culture Chachapoyan[1] Date [2] c. 64 BC Discovery Location Peru, South America[1] Date 1936[3] Discoverer Indiana Jones[3] Collector National Museum[2]

"The beliefs and superstitions of an entire culture, all wrapped up in a 2000-year-old, six-inch lump of gold!" ―Indiana Jones[src]

The Chachapoyan Fertility Idol, also known the Idol of the Chachapoyan Warriors (shortened to Idol of the Warriors) or Golden Idol, was a six-inch tall, solid gold representation of the Chachapoyan goddess of fertility known to the Inca as Pachamama.

The idol was hidden by the tribe's priests in a temple deep within the jungles of Peru. Braving the temple's deadly traps to stare into the idol's eyes became a rite of passage for young Chachapoyan warriors, its exact weight precisely counterbalancing the trigger of an ancient self-destruct system.

The Chachapoyan Fertility Idol was created by the Chachapoyans circa 64 BC,[2] around the same time the Temple of the Warriors was erected to house it.[1] The Chachapoyan priests hid the idol away inside the temple as part of a soldier's rite passage.[4]

Around the 19th century, an American explorer named McHenry discovered the House of Warriors while excavating what remained of the Chachapoyan city of Tec'na'al. The gathering hall was decorated with pictographs that contained directions of, as well as a crude map to, the Temple of the Chachapoyan Warriors. McHenry noted the images, but the ruins were later hit by an earthquake. His research, however, was eventually kept at the University of Chicago.[4]

In 1935, a Princeton University archaeologist named Forrestal went to the jungles of Chachapoyas, Peru while attempting to recover the fertility idol of Pachamama from the temple.[5] Working from McHenry's notes, Forrestal was ultimately able to find the temple despite part of the map being stolen by the local thieves Barranca and Satipo.[4] Unfortunately for him, Forrestal rushed into the ancient structure without checking if there were any booby traps and was killed by a spike trap.[6]

In 1936, on commission from the National Museum and working from Forrestal's notes, Indiana Jones managed to locate the temple and extract the statue. Barranca and Satipo accompanied him alongside several porters, but Barranca was chased away after an unsuccessful attempt on Jones' life and then killed by the Hovitos while Satipo remained with the archaeologist. Upon triggering the temple's self-destruct mechanisms by taking the idol, Jones was betrayed by Satipo, who took the idol and left him to die. However, Satipo met his own end on a spike trap and Jones escaped the temple with the idol. Once outside, the idol was stolen by rogue archaeologist René Emile Belloq, who sent the Hovitos to chase Jones while he left with the idol.[3] Belloq promptly unloaded the artifact in Marrakesh, where Jones later re-appropriated it from the shop of antiquities dealer Saad Hassim.[2]

The National Museum celebrated the idol's arrival with a lavish banquet at the Diamond's Eye nightclub in New York City. Among the guests was a band of angry Hovitos led by Xomec, alleged descendant of the Chachapoyans. Xomec swiped the idol from curator Marcus Brody and fled to the jungles of Brazil. Jones gave chase, and after defeating Xomec and his Nazi co-conspirator Ilsa Toht, once again reclaimed the idol for the museum.[2]

Behind the scenes [ edit | edit source ]

In Raiders of the Lost Ark, the original idea for the scenes with the Chachapoyan Fertility Idol was to have its eyes following Indiana Jones as he moved around the room. As such, one of the props built featured mechanical moving eyes. Evidence of this can still be seen in the archival footage on the film's DVD. Ultimately, the idea was abandoned though one shot remains in the final film -- the one where Indy is pouring sand out of the bag.[7]

Dialogue by René Emile Belloq during the Marhala Bar scenes which was dropped from the final cut of Raiders indicates that Belloq wasn't intended to get away with the idol, with Belloq revealing that he was lucky to escape with his own life because the Hovitos ultimately proved to be quite "narrow-minded" with regards to who the idol's owner was.[7] The absence of the line allowed the artifact's story to continue in The Further Adventures of Indiana Jones by Marvel Comics.[2]

During the early development of the fourth film, Frank Darabont's script featured a drunk Indiana Jones stealing the Chachapoyan Fertility Idol from the National Museum after unfairly losing his job at Barnett College.[8]

There were plans by Icons in the mid-1990s to create a Chachapoyan Fertility Idol prop replica for a proposed Indiana Jones-licensed product-line called The Treasures of Indiana Jones, so some concept art was made. However, Icons' plans ultimately didn't go ahead.[9]

In the game LEGO Indiana Jones: The Original Adventures, Indy extracts the statue and leaves the temple with Satipo. Once in the jungle, Belloq confronts Jones, and Indy tries to give him other things (first a diamond, a rubber duck, and then C-3PO's head, which is very similar to the Idol) but Belloq isn't fooled and takes the real deal.[10] Although the Peru sequence is omitted from the sequel, it appears that Indy extracted the Idol successfully as he gives it to Marcus Brody, having been chased by the giant rolling boulder from Peru to the United States.[11]