Mural Fragment Representing a Ritual of World Renewal Date: A.D. 500/600 The ancient Mexican city of Teotihuacan was once the largest city in all of the Americas. The pomp and color of this great city were expressed most distinctively through its monumental architecture. Facades of pyramids and interiors of palaces, temples, and homes were frequently decorated with splendid frescoes. The fragment shown here was part of a cycle painted on the interior walls of an aristocratic palace. It shows a rain priest walking or dancing in profile and wearing an elaborate headdress and costume. His speech-scroll, adorned with seashells and plants, indicates that he is praying for water and agricultural prosperity, which were highly valued in his society.
Meaning “place of the gods,” Teotihuacan was the largest religious, military, and trading city in the Americas between A.D. 200 and 650, and it was inhabited by over one hundred thousand people at its peak. Designed with colossal pyramids and ritual plazas, the metropolis was built on a cosmologically oriented grid plan that embraced residential and manufacturing districts. This richly symbolic fragment from a Teotihuacan wall fresco depicts a ceremony that took place once every fifty-two years, a “century” in the ancient Mexican calendar system. A priest stands before a tied bundle of reeds representing the completion of a cycle of time. The bundle is impaled by the spiny points of maguey cactus leaves, with which the priestly protagonist of the scene has pricked himself to provide a blood offering. Water symbols in the form of shells and flowers are depicted within the speech-scroll curling from the priest’s mouth. Additional flowers and water are sprinkled from one of the priest’s hands, while in the other he holds an incense bag. Corresponding to the chants of a religious litany, this complex image was repeated with others on the walls of a chamber as a prayer of thanksgiving and for the renewal of agricultural fertility.
Mask from an Incense Burner Portraying the Old Deity of Fire A.D. 450/750
Shell Mosaic Ritual Mask AD 300/600 Teotihuacan, the ruins of which are located near Mexico City, was one of the largest and most complex cities in the world during the first millennium AD. Although this mask shares features common to others from the city—a broad forehead, prominent nose, receding chin, and widely spaced cheekbones—it is subtly unique, indicating that it may represent a stylized portrait. Tied to wooden armatures adorned with feathers, jewelry, and garments, such masks were displayed in residential compounds and temples where they were the focus of rituals commemorating ancestors who acted as intermediaries between the living and the deified forces of nature. An older, recut stone mask was covered with mosaic tiles made from the inner layer of spondylus shell imported from the Pacific coast. The use of this exotic material suggests the far-reaching power, author¬ity, and wealth of Teotihuacan. Spondylus was also considered sacred, associating this mask and the individual it honors with the generative power of lakes, rivers, and the sea.
Ritual Mask A.D. 300/750
Bowl Depicting a Ritual Figure and Flaming Torches A.D. 300/600 Teotihuacan ceramic vessels were often fired and coated with a fine plaster that was then painted with figures and symbolic elements. This technique was derived from methods employed by mural painters, who covered masonry walls with fine plaster to serve as the ground for large-scale frescoes. The flaming torch may well allude to the ceremony of New Fire, kindled at New Year’s festivals and every 52 years at the inauguration of a new “century” in the native calendar system.
Tripod Vessel with a Blowgunner Scene A.D. 300/500
Mirror with Jaguar or Coyote Mosaic Date: A.D. 500/600
For over 2,000 years, polished stone mirrors were an important component of Mesoamerican attire, ritual, and symbolic imagery. This mirror is made of a single sheet of polished pyrite stone and includes a jade jaguar mosaic at its center. Mirrors often functioned as emblems of rank and office and were typically worn at the small of the back. The depiction of such mirrors in ancient murals, as worn by warriors, priests, and state officials, attests to their importance in the spectacular art of ritual performance in Teotihuacan.
MIKE RUGGERI'S ART INSTITUTE ANCIENT AMERICAS 