Indiana Jones Artifacts: Every Relic He Chases in the Films

Across five films, Indiana Jones goes after eight major artifacts: the golden idol, the headpiece to the Staff of Ra, the Ark of the Covenant, the Sankara Stones, the cross of Coronado, the Holy Grail, the crystal skull and the Antikythera dial. Every relic here comes from the movies, not from Indiana Jones and the Great Circle. Steven Spielberg directed the first four films, starting with Raiders of the Lost Ark (1981), and James Mangold directed the fifth, Dial of Destiny (2023).

What does Indy do with the artifacts he finds? It depends on the film. Sometimes he returns an object to the people it was taken from, sometimes the government locks it away, and sometimes the relic is simply gone for good.

Is Indiana Jones an archaeologist (or an archeologist, as many people type it)? Yes, he is introduced as one, and the films show him teaching: at a college in Raiders, at Marshall College in Kingdom of the Crystal Skull (2008) and at Hunter College in New York in Dial of Destiny. One point for newcomers: Temple of Doom (1984) is set in 1935, a year before Raiders, so it comes first in story order. Our guide to Indiana Jones movies in order and the Indiana Jones timeline lay that out in full. For the whole series at a glance, start at the Indiana Jones movies hub.

The golden idol is the first Indiana Jones artifact on screen, recovered from a booby trapped temple in Peru in 1936 at the start of Raiders of the Lost Ark. Indy barely escapes the temple with it, only to lose it to a rival waiting outside.

That rival is the French archaeologist René Belloq, played by Paul Freeman, who takes the idol from Indy the moment he is out. The idol never makes it home, so its job in the story is to establish who Indy is and who he is up against. Belloq returns as the man racing him to the Ark, which makes the loss of the idol the first move in a rivalry that carries the whole film.

For a profile of the man who takes it, see René Belloq, and for the wider cast of antagonists see the Indiana Jones villains page.

The headpiece to the Staff of Ra is the object that tells Indy where the Ark of the Covenant is buried, and it is the reason the Nazis cannot simply dig it up. It was once held by Indy's old mentor, and by 1936 it belongs to his former love, Marion Ravenwood, who keeps it in Nepal.

That ownership sends Indy to Marion's bar, and it also brings the Nazi agent Toht to her door. A fight leaves the bar in flames, and from there the two travel to Cairo, where they join Indy's friend Sallah. The headpiece does the work of a map, but in a very physical way, because it has to be used with the staff at the right place.

The payoff comes when the Nazis dig in the wrong spot while Indy uses the staff headpiece to find the true location of the Ark's resting place. Nothing explodes, and yet the object decides the outcome. You can read more about the people involved at Marion Ravenwood and Sallah.

The Ark of the Covenant is the object that drives all of Raiders of the Lost Ark, and the legend attached to it promises great power to whoever holds it. That promise is why army intelligence sends Indy after it, with Hitler's agents already digging in Egypt.

The Ark sits in the Well of Souls, a chamber full of snakes. Indy lifts it out, but Belloq and the Nazis wall him in with Marion, and the pair have to break free before the real chase begins: a truck convoy, a ship and a German submarine that ends up at a remote island. There Belloq stages a ceremony to open the lid, with Indy and Marion bound as witnesses.

Indy warns Marion to shut her eyes. What comes out of the Ark kills Belloq and the Nazis, and the two survivors take it home. Then the film pulls a quiet trick: officials in Washington thank Indy, crate the Ark and file it in a vast warehouse among countless other boxes. In my opinion that last shot is the sharpest joke in the series, because the most powerful object in the saga ends up as paperwork. John Williams wrote the Raiders March for this film, and you can read more on the Indiana Jones soundtrack page.

The Sankara Stones are the sacred objects that pull Indy into Temple of Doom, and unlike the Ark they belong to a village, not to a museum or a government. In Mayapore, a starving community in India, the elders tell Indy that their stone is gone and their children have been taken. Indy agrees to help, partly because he is curious about the fabled stones.

The trail ends at Pankot Palace, where a lavish banquet covers what lies under the building. A hidden temple holds the Thuggee cult of the priest Mola Ram, which performs human sacrifices and forces the captive children to labor in a mine. Indy, Willie Scott and Short Round free the children, retrieve the stones and escape through the mine by runaway cart, with a flood behind them.

The stones matter again on the rope bridge over the gorge. Indy cuts the ropes, and in the last struggle the stones burn Mola Ram's hands before he falls. With the final stone recovered, the heroes carry the sacred stone and the children back to Mayapore. Look at Short Round and Willie Scott for the two people who help him.

The cross of Coronado is a prize, not a weapon, and its job in The Last Crusade (1989) is to show how Indiana Jones became Indiana Jones. In the prologue, a young Boy Scout takes the cross from a gang of grave robbers and runs, first on horseback and then across a circus train. The gang leader, who loses the cross, lets the boy keep a fedora anyway.

That hat answers the question of which item Indy always carries, and River Phoenix plays him in these 1912 scenes as Young Indy. The cross itself returns in 1938, when the adult Indy takes it from a collector off the Portuguese coast.

Only after that recovery does the main story begin, when Indy learns that his father Henry has gone missing during a search for the Holy Grail. The cross is the smallest relic on this list, but it sets up both the character and the quest.

Indiana Jones finds the Holy Grail inside the Grail temple in The Last Crusade (1989), after a long trail that begins with his missing father. Henry Jones is a Grail scholar, and Walter Donovan, who paid for Henry's search, hires Indy to take it over.

The diary is the real map. Indy and Marcus Brody travel to Venice, meet Elsa Schneider, and find a clue in a catacomb under a library. A secret brotherhood tries to stop them and points Indy toward a castle where Henry is held. Indy later reclaims the diary at a rally in Berlin, and father and son flee by zeppelin and plane. The Nazis follow the diary to Hatay, where Indy wrecks their convoy and a tank goes over a cliff.

The temple is a test of nerve. Donovan shoots Henry so that Indy must face the traps, and the Grail Knight tells him that only one cup is the true Grail. Elsa gives Donovan the wrong cup and he ages to death. Indy picks correctly and the water heals Henry. Elsa dies grabbing for the Grail as the temple breaks apart, and Indy nearly follows her until Henry talks him out of it. The Grail falls into an abyss. See Henry Jones Sr and Marcus Brody for the rest of the party.

The crystal skull is the relic of Kingdom of the Crystal Skull, set in 1957, and it ties the series to a very different kind of legend: one of thirteen interdimensional beings that ancient peoples worshipped. The villains also change. Colonel Irina Spalko leads Soviet agents who want the skull's power for their country.

Mutt Williams brings Indy into it, saying that Harold Oxley vanished in Peru after finding a skull while looking for the lost city of Akator. The two follow Oxley's clues to an explorer's tomb in Peru and find a skull there. Soviet troops seize them and haul them to an Amazon camp, where they meet Spalko, Mac, a mentally damaged Oxley and Marion Ravenwood, who tells Indy that Mutt is his son.

At Akator, Spalko puts the skull back on its skeleton and asks for knowledge. A portal opens, Mac and the soldiers are drawn through, and Spalko takes in more than she can bear and is destroyed. Indy, Marion, Mutt and Oxley run as the city falls apart and a flying saucer departs for another dimension. Mutt Williams is the character who starts the hunt.

The Dial of Destiny is the Antikythera dial, a device linked to Archimedes, and it carries the fifth Indiana Jones film, which The Numbers lists at a $300 million budget. The opening in 1944 puts Indy and Basil Shaw on a Nazi train loaded with stolen treasure. Jürgen Voller finds one half of the dial, and Indy gets away with the other.

By 1969, Indy is an aging professor at Hunter College in New York and close to retirement. His goddaughter Helena Shaw, Basil's daughter, tricks him out of his half and plans to sell it in Tangier. Voller, hiding in the US under a false name and working on the space program, sends men after it. The pursuit crosses New York, Tangier and Greece, and the second half turns up in a wreck off Sicily.

Voller wants to go back to 1939 and change the war. His plane passes through a time fissure, but the dial's reading was off and he lands in 212 BC, during the Siege of Syracuse. Indy is thrilled to meet Archimedes and wants to remain, but Helena knocks him out and brings him back. They return to 1969 with the dial, and Voller stays stranded in the ancient past. Read about Helena Shaw for the newcomer who makes that choice.

Ranked by what each artifact actually does on screen, the Ark of the Covenant is the most powerful of the eight, and in my opinion the order below holds up even if you weigh fame instead of force. I judged each relic on its effect in its own film, not on how often fans talk about it.

1. Ark of the Covenant. It kills Belloq and the Nazi soldiers on the island while Indy and Marion keep their eyes shut, and in my opinion nothing else in the saga removes an entire army in one scene. The government's decision to bury it in a warehouse tells you how seriously the film takes it.
2. Holy Grail. It heals Henry Jones from a gunshot and ages Donovan to death in the same sequence. It sits second only because its power is selective, and the Grail Knight's warning about choosing the right cup makes the test as important as the object.
3. Crystal skull. The beings behind it open a portal and pull in Mac and the soldiers, and the knowledge they give Spalko destroys her. In my opinion it would rank higher if the film had given the audience a clearer rule for what the skull can and cannot do.
4. Dial of Destiny. It opens a time fissure that carries Voller to 212 BC, and it is a hugely consequential device. It lands fourth because it is the only artifact whose reading was wrong, and Voller ends up stranded in the Siege of Syracuse, not in 1939 where he wanted to be.
5. Sankara Stones. The stones burn Mola Ram's hands in the last fight on the broken bridge, and they drive the whole rescue of the children. Perhaps they should rank higher for the emotional weight they carry in Mayapore, but on raw power they are the quietest of the big relics.
6. Headpiece to the Staff of Ra. It has no force of its own, but it points Indy to the true location of the Ark while the Nazis dig in the wrong spot. In my opinion it is the best clue in the series.
7. Golden idol. It starts the whole saga with one escape from a booby trapped temple in Peru, and then it is taken by Belloq. It ranks seventh because it does nothing once it leaves Indy's hands.
8. Cross of Coronado. It is a prize, not a weapon, and its job is to give Young Indy a chase and a fedora in The Last Crusade. That is a perfectly good job, and the ranking says nothing against the scene.

If you want the same treatment for the films themselves, see Indiana Jones movies ranked, and for what comes next in the saga, check Indiana Jones 6.