The Tlaloc Monolith
Classic period, about first to seventh century
Before you even reach the ticket desk, a seven metre block of grey stone stands in a pool of water at the edge of Paseo de la Reforma. It is the largest ancient monolith in the Americas, weighing about one hundred and sixty five tonnes, and is usually identified as Tlaloc, the rain god, though some scholars think the figure is a water goddess, Chalchiuhtlicue. The carving is blocky and unfinished, with a square face, folded arms and a broad skirt, as if the sculptors stopped before the last stage of work.
Walk around it and you will see that the back is flat and the sides are barely worked. The figure was carved at the quarry from a single boulder and seems never to have been moved by its makers, which is why some believe it was abandoned. The rough surface makes the stone feel older than it is, and the scale, three or four times human height, was the point: the god of rain was meant to dominate the landscape of fields that depended on him.
The monolith lay for centuries in a ravine near the village of San Miguel Coatlinchan, east of Mexico City, where local people treated it with affection and left offerings. In nineteen sixty four, as the new museum was being built, the government decided to bring it to the capital. A special trailer carried it forty kilometres, the villagers protested and had to be persuaded with a school and a road, and when the stone finally rolled into the city on the sixteenth of April a torrential and unseasonal downpour fell on the crowds. Ever since, people have said that Tlaloc announced his arrival.
Did You Know? The day the stone arrived in Mexico City in nineteen sixty four, an out of season rainstorm hit the capital, which locals took as the rain god's greeting.
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