Anahuac : or, Mexico and the Mexicans, Ancient and Modern

by Edward B. Tylor

V. DESCRIPTION OF THREE VERY RARE SPECIMENS OF ANCIENT MEXICAN MOSAIC-WORK (IN THE COLLECTION OF HENRY CHRISTY, ESQ.).

These Specimens, two Masks and a Knife, (see [page 101].) are interesting as presenting examples of higher art than has been supposed to have been attained to by the ancient Mexicans, or any other of the native American peoples. Their distinctive feature is an incrustation of Mosaic of Turquoise, cut and polished, and fitted with extreme nicety,—a work of great labour, time, and cost in any country, and especially so amongst a people to whom the use of iron was unknown,—and carried out with a perfection which suggests the idea that the art must have been long practised under the fostering of wealth and power, although so few examples of it have come down to us.

Although considerably varied, they are all three of one family of work, so to speak; the predominant feature being the use of turquoise; and the question which presents itself at the outset is—what are the evidences that this unique work is of Aztec origin?

The proofs are so interwoven with the style and structure of the specimens that their appearance and nationality are best treated of together.

The Mask of wood is covered with minute pieces of turquoise—cut and polished, accurately fitted, many thousands in number, and set on a dark gum or cement. The eyes, however, are acute-oval patches of mother-of-pearl; and there are two small square patches of the same on the temples, through which a string passed to suspend the mask; and the teeth are of hard white shell. The eyes are perforated, and so are the nostrils, and the upper and lower teeth are separated by a transverse chink; thus a wearer of the mask (which sits easily on one’s face) can see, breathe, and speak with ease. The features bear that remarkably placid and contemplative expression which distinguishes so many of the Aztec works, in common with those of the Egyptians, whether in their massive stone sculptures, or in the smallest and commonest heads of baked earth. The face, which is well-proportioned, pleasing, and of great symmetry, is studded also with numerous projecting pieces of turquoise, rounded and polished.

In addition to the character of the work and the style of face, the evidence of the Aztec origin of this mask is confirmed by the wood being of the fragrant cedar or cypress of Mexico. It may be remarked also that the inside is painted red, as are the wooden masks of the Indians of the North-west coast of America at the present day.

The Knife presents, both in form and substance, more direct evidence of its Aztec origin; for, in addition to its incrustation with the unique mosaic of turquoise, blended (in this case) with malachite and white and red shell, its handle is sculptured in the form of a crouching human figure, covered with the skin of an eagle, and presenting the well-known and distinctive Aztec type of the human head issuing from the mouth of an animal. (See cut, [p. 101].) Beyond this there is in the stone blade the curious fact of a people which had attained to so complex a design and such an elaborate ornamentation remaining in the Stone-age; and, somewhat curiously, the locality of that stone blade is fixed, by its being of that semi-transparent opalescent calcedony which Humboldt describes as occurring in the volcanic districts of Mexico—the concretionary silex of the trachytic lavas.

The second Mask is yet more distinctive. The incrustation of turquoise-mosaic is placed on the forehead, face, and jaws of a human skull, the back part of which has been cut away to allow of its being hung, by the leather thongs which still remain, over the face of an idol, as was the custom in Mexico thus to mask their gods on state-occasions. The mosaic of turquoise is interrupted by three broad transverse bands, on the forehead, face, and chin, of a mosaic of obsidian, similarly cut (but in larger pieces) and highly polished,—a very unusual treatment of this difficult and intractable material, the use of which in any artistic way appears to have been confined to the Aztecs (with the exception, perhaps, of the Egyptians).

The eye-balls are nodules of iron-pyrites, cut hemispherically and highly polished, and are surrounded by circles of hard white shell, similar to that forming the teeth of the wooden mask.

The Aztecs made their mirrors of iron-pyrites polished, and are the only people who are known to have put this material to ornamental use.

The mixture of art, civilization, and barbarism which the hideous aspect of this green and black skull-mask presents accords with the condition of Mexico at the time of the Conquest, under which human sacrifices on a gigantic scale were coincident with much refinement in arts and manners.

The European history of these three specimens is somewhat curious. With the exception of two in the Museum at Copenhagen, obtained many years ago by Professor Thomsen from a convent in Rome, and, though greatly dilapidated, presenting some traces of the game kind of ornamentation, they are believed to be unique.

The Wooden Mask and the Knife were long known in a collection at Florence. Thirty years ago the mask was brought into England from that city, as Egyptian: and, somewhat later, the knife was obtained from Venice.

Subsequently the Skull-mask, with a wig of hair said to be a scalp, was found at Bruges; a locality which leads to the presumption that the mask was brought from Mexico soon after the Conquest in 1521, and prior to the expulsion of the Spaniards from Flanders consequent on the revolt of the Low Countries in 1579.

Note.—It happens singularly enough, that a curious old work, Aldrorandus, Musaeum Metallicum, Bologna, 1613, contains drawings of a knife and wooden mask ornamented with mosaic-work of stone, made just in the came way as those described above, and only differing from them in the design. What became of them I cannot tell.