(lively piano music) - [Voiceover] We're in the National Museum of Anthropology in Mexico City, and we're looking at a
monumental basalt sculpture. This is just fantastic. - [Voiceover] What we're looking
at is the famous Coatlicue. - [Voiceover] Now, Coatlicue
is an Aztec goddess. - [Voiceover] She is the mother of the patron deity, Huitzilopochtli. - [Voiceover] He's one
of the principal gods of the Aztec pantheon. - [Voiceover] He's the god of war, and he's also associated with the sun. - [Voiceover] But here
we're seeing a monumental sculpture of this goddess, and in fact, we think that
she was one of several monumental figures of goddesses found in the Sacred Precinct, under
what is now Mexico City. - [Voiceover] The Sacred
Precinct was located at the very center of the Aztec
capital city of Tenochtitlan. We refer to the Sacred
Precinct as the "axis mundi," this Center of the World, the axis point around which the entire Universe
revolved, for the Aztecs. - [Voiceover] This is
late in Aztec culture. In just a couple of decades,
the Spanish will arrive, and the Aztec Empire will be dismantled. But at this point, the
Aztecs ruled Meso-America. - [Voiceover] They ruled a
vast portion of Meso-America, not the entirety, but a large
portion of what is today, say, Central Mexico. This is one of the most amazing
sculptures to stand before and yet here we are, in
the Anthropology Museum, and we're standing among
so many incredible, finely carved basalt sculptures. What I always find so wonderful about her is that she's leaning forward. - [Voiceover] What makes her
feel even more monumental, even more dangerous, even more present as
we stand before her... So this is a really complicated figure. Let's start at the bottom. We do see two feet, but
these feet have claws, and they have eyes. - [Voiceover] These are like monster feet. They're zoomorphized with
these talons and eyes. - [Voiceover] And as
we rise up, we see fur, or feathers, and patterned areas, and it's important to remember all of this would have originally
been brightly painted. - [Voiceover] And above that, the most important
component of the sculpture, at least, how we identify
the sculpture, is the skirt. We have all of these
amazing, intertwined snakes. - [Voiceover] And you can see
not only the snakes' heads, but also their rattles. These are rattlesnakes, poisonous snakes, they're intertwined in
the most complex ways. - [Voiceover] Her name literally means "snaky skirt" or "snakes her skirt". - [Voiceover] And, for instance, one of the other large, female figures that we see from this Precinct, is known as "hearts-her-skirt," and instead of snakes,
we see human hearts. That skirt is bound together
by this belt, which has, both on the front and
the back, a human skull. - [Voiceover] And the
skull is fastened together with another two snakes, and the tassels of the belt are the heads of these snakes. - [Voiceover] Perhaps
the most terrifying part of this sculpture is just above that, where we see a necklace
made up of alternating hands and human hearts. - [Voiceover] This necklace
covers her exposed torso, and we can actually see
her pendulous breasts, indicating that she had
given birth to children, which is also referenced
in the roll on her stomach. For me, I think the part
that I always have found most interesting is the
fact that she's decapitated. - [Voiceover] And we know
that because we can see these circular forms,
just above the clavicle. - [Voiceover] Those circles
are signs of preciousness, which in this case is
probably a reference to blood, some kind of precious liquid. - [Voiceover] So what
we're seeing above that, is not her head, but instead, two snakes, that are winding out of her neck, and come together, face to face. - [Voiceover] This is a
convention for spurting blood, and what's wonderful about this is these two snakes almost form
a frontal-facing snake head. We see the tongues hanging down, the bared teeth, and this is really where Aztec sculptors, for
me, are so impressive. We not only have the scales
of the snakes to find, but also even the
underbelly of the snakes. - [Voiceover] And then there are the arms. These are a little bit hard to read. We have her forearm up, so that the back of her hand
is against her shoulder. - [Voiceover] It almost
has this impression as if she's about to pounce, and then we have snakes
rising from her wrists, which also indicates that she
was dismembered at the wrists. And then again we have,
maybe, spurting blood, from where her hands would have been. - [Voiceover] But this is only
the front of the sculpture, and the sculpture is
actually carved in the round. Not only on the sides,
but also on the back, and even underneath. - [Voiceover] And as we watch the back, what you can also see on the
arms that are pulled back, are, like the feet, monster joints, these kind of zoomorphized
faces with bared teeth, with the eyes, and of course
this wonderful snake skirt. - [Voiceover] And a kind of
bustle, that shows the snakes, woven together, with
their rattles as tassels. - [Voiceover] And another
skull, fastened at the belt. - [Voiceover] But what
I find most fascinating, is that this massive piece of stone, is actually carved below as well, with a shallow relief carving, which we can see in reproduction. - [Voiceover] On the bottom
of this sculpture we have the Earth Lord, or Tlaltecuhtli. - [Voiceover] So this god, the Earth god, would have had this
sculptural relief facing him, that is, facing down to the Earth. - [Voiceover] We actually see this on a lot of Aztec sculptures where this Earth Lord would have been touching the surface of the Earth. - [Voiceover] Think about the engineering that's involved here. Moving a piece of basalt this large, but then, being able to up-end it, so that you can carve the bottom of it, and then move it into place
without destroying it, is a phenomenal idea. When the sculpture was found, in 1790, in what was then New Spain, this must have been a terrifying image that was counter to everything that the Europeans and their
Christianity represented. - [Voiceover] When this was dug up, near the main temple of the Aztecs, in what had formerly
been the Sacred Precinct, it was discovered with
the famous Calendar Stone, or, more correctly, the Sun Stone, and people were both fascinated and disturbed by this
sculpture in particular, because it was so different than anything that they had seen, and so, they re-buried it because it
was considered so terrifying, whereas they took the other sculpture and placed it into the
exterior of the cathedral. - [Voiceover] I love that
this was so terrifying that it had to be re-buried, and that it was only
excavated much more recently. So much of this iconography,
so much of the imagery that's carved onto this
figure is terrifying, is aggressive to our sensibilities today, and I think it's led so
many people to emphasize the issue of human
sacrifice in Aztec culture. - [Voiceover] Human sacrifice did occur, not to the extent that early Colonial Spanish sources proclaim. There are sources that
claim that 84,000 people were killed in a single day which, logistically, just seems
a little challenging. I think where we can see some of those potential references to sacrifice would be in things like the necklace of human hearts and hands. - [Voiceover] Which might
be a poetic metaphor, but it may also be a metaphor
for sacrifice itself. But now, in the 21st century, to see a towering sculpture ten feet tall, this massive stone depicting human hearts and human hands, fangs and snakes, it is a stunning image. - [Voiceover] And I think
it's a true testament to the artists of Mexica
culture, or Aztec culture. This particular sculpture
is very well-preserved, and it shows us the interest
in the natural world, say, in the snakes, but combined, where you have this wonderful vision of a supernatural deity. (soft piano music)