This highly decorated figure of a woman giving birth is both visually compelling and enigmatic due to the rarity of its type. While carvings of women are not uncommon in the corpus of figurative sculpture from New Guinea, representations of birth scenes are extremely rare, and the original function of this figure is unkown. In 1969, Carl Schmitz wrote of this figure, “It is not clear whether the representation concerns the birth of a human being, or the legend of a female divinity who gave birth to yams as well as people, and was the founder of mankind.”

A recent study suggests the figure appears both male and female based on the face and adornment articles. This interpretation is consistent with New Guinea origin stories, which often recount epic relationships between female and male ancestors including transposable and mutable roles and qualities.