Sidney and Lois Eskenazi Museum of Art

About this Work

This compelling but cryptic figure is a type associated with the Zapotec people who built the ceremonial center of Monte Albán, the largest ancient American site in the Mexican state of Oaxaca. Most such ceramic figural urns have been found in tombs as part of elite burials, though some were also placed in the floors of ceremonial complexes and buried in boxes. The urns show no evidence of having held food, drink, human remains, or incense, although some have been found with offerings of small objects, such as carved jade.

This figure may represent an archaic form of Quetzalcoatl, the Aztec plumed serpent. If that is correct, then this is one of the earliest associations of a serpent deity with a bill-type mask that would later, among the Aztecs, indicate Quetzalcoatl in his guise as Ehecatl, the wind god.