ON THE RELIGIOUS USE OF VARIOUS STONES 307
tions
of turquoise, so disposed as to figure two intertwined serpents ; a
crozier, also with turquoise mosaic and ending in a serpent's head; a
pair of large ear-rings of serpentine form decorated with the chalchihuitl stone (perhaps nephrite or jadeite) ; a mitre of ocelot skin, surmounted by a large chalchihuitl, and
also decorated with turquoise mosaic, and a staff of office with
similar inlays. A serpent-mask answering to the description of one of
Montezuma's gifts is now in the British Museum and is in a fairly good
state of preservation, although unfortunately the two serpent-heads
have been lost. Evidently this mask was used in connection with the
worship of Quetzalcoatl, the serpent-god, an incarnation of which
deity the poor Aztecs at first believed Cortes to be.41»
Surpassing
this mask in a certain strange and weird interest, and equalling it in
artistic workmanship, is another most remarkable Aztec ceremonial mask,
also in the British Museum Collection. The foundation of this is the
front part of a human skull, and its outer surface has been covered
with an incrustation of turquoise and jet mosaic in five alternate
bands, the upper, middle and lower ones being of jet, while the two
intermediate ones are of shaped pieces of turquoise ; part of the nose
has been removed and the space covered over by tablets of pink shell ;
protruding eyeballs are figured by convex disks of polished iron
pyrites with a bordering of white shell; a number of the teeth have
been broken out. Straps attached at the temples rendered it possible to
bind this mask to the face of an idol, or for a priest of high rank to
wear it on solemn ceremonial occasions.
Some three hundred yards or more from the great temple pyramid at Chichen Itzâ, Yucatan, Mexico, at the termina-
"»
W. H. Holmes, " Masterpieces of Aboriginal American Art," II, Mosaic
Work; reprint from Art and Archeology, vol. i, no. 3, Nov., 1914; see
pp. 96, 97, and Figs. 2 and 3, pp. 92, 93.
