纪录片《大英博物馆世界简史》 069瓦斯特克女神雕像（3）（在线收听）

Here in the Mexico Gallery at the British Museum, I am looking at a statue of a woman. Not just one woman, in fact, because although she is in prime position, she is presiding over a group of companions, three sandstone sisters, all carved to the same design.

Our statue is about five feet (1.5m) high, so more-or-less life-size, but she's not at all lifelike. She looks as though she's been shaped by a giant pastry-cutter - the contours of the body are straight lines, the surface is flat - you might almost imagine she's a huge gingerbread woman. When you step to the side, you can see that she's carved out of a very thin piece of sandstone. Edge-on, she's less than six inches (15 cm) thick. She folds her hands over her stomach, and her arms are held out from her sides, making two triangular spaces. In fact, she's really just a series of geometric shapes. Her breasts are perfect hemispheres, and below the waist she wears a rectangular skirt, which falls flat and undecorated to the plinth. This is a lady of straight lines and hard edges, clearly not somebody you would choose to mess with!