Double-Headed Serpent
Fifteenth to early sixteenth century
A serpent with a head at each end curls into a wave shape, its body covered in a glittering skin of turquoise mosaic. The two heads gape open to show red gums and teeth made of white shell, and the noses and eye sockets are outlined in red shell. The back is hollow and unfinished, which suggests the serpent was worn or carried on the chest or held up in ceremonies. It is one of a small number of Aztec turquoise mosaics that survive, and the most striking.
Look at the mosaic itself. Some two thousand pieces of turquoise, each cut and shaped, were fixed onto a carved wooden base with pine resin. The craftsmen chose the pieces so that the colour deepens along the curves of the body, and they set the tiny tesserae of the heads to follow the scales. The teeth are conch shell and the gums are thorny oyster, a red shell from the Pacific coast. Turquoise came from far to the north, perhaps from what is now the south western United States, traded from hand to hand over thousands of kilometres.
Serpents were everywhere in Aztec religion. The double headed serpent may represent the sky, or the god Quetzalcoatl, the feathered serpent, or the fire serpent carried by the sun. Objects like this were sent by the Aztec ruler Moctezuma to Hernan Cortes when the Spanish arrived in fifteen nineteen, and it is possible that this serpent was among them, though its exact history is unknown before the nineteenth century. The museum acquired it in eighteen ninety four. In the Mexico gallery it shares a case with a turquoise mask and a mosaic covered skull, the finest group of Aztec mosaics outside Mexico.
Did You Know? The turquoise probably came from mines more than two thousand kilometres north of the Aztec capital, passed along trade routes that reached into today's American Southwest.
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