Jenks Hehmeyer ANTH 281 Professor Foias Animal Coessence in The Seeds of Divinity: Naturalism, the Gods, and the Souls Introduction In this essay, I provide my analysis of three pieces from the upcoming The Seeds of Divinity exhibit at the Williams College Museum of Art (WCMA). The exhibit includes objects from five Precolumbian Mesoamerican civilizations: the Aztec, Maya, Teotihuacan, Zapotec, and West Mexico/Nayarit. One of the pieces covered by this paper, WAM 1966.52, is of Aztec origin. The Aztec empire was founded by the Mexica people of central Mexico in 1428, and lasted less than a century, with the Spanish conquest marking its end in 1521 (Conrad and Demarest 1984). During this short time, the Aztec developed great military strength, a massive central urban center at the capital Tenochtitlan, and a complex set of religious practices that often involved human sacrifice. The Aztec pantheon of gods features many well-known deities, including the feathered serpent Quetzalcoatl, the rain god Tlaloc, and the Mexica patron god Huitzilopochtli. Worship of these gods often involved the creation of localized embodiments, or teixiptlahuan, in which a human being or an inanimate object took on the appearance of a god, and in doing so, could temporarily become that god. Human teixiptlahuan were often sacrificed themselves, while inanimate teixiptlahuan were often worshiped with sacrifices of humans or animals, and by other rituals (Bassett 2015). Hehmeyer 2 The other two pieces—WAM 1985.100 and 1929.77—are Zapotec effigy urns. The Zapotec civilization lasted from approximately 700 B.C. to the time of the Spanish conquest. Comprised of a group of villages and cities in the Valley of Oaxaca in Southern Mexico. The Zapotec people are marked by their shared language and beliefs. Its most important urban center, Monte Alban, was constructed in what was likely a response to nearby military activity. The city would gradually grow over time, conquering neighboring groups and expanding its influence, before collapsing in about 900. The two Zapotec urns likely originate from what archeologists have designated as the second period of Monte Alban, or “Monte Alban II”, lasting from 100 B.C. to 200 A.D. (1929.77, 1985.100). By this time, Monte Alban had grown to a population of over 14,000 and featured major social stratification, including a powerful ruling class (Marcus and Flannery 1996). The exact meaning of the famous Zapotec effigy urns has only recently been uncovered. Although commonly found in a mortuary context, the urns likely were used in important religious rituals, before being buried alongside deceased members of the ruling class (Sellen 2002). It is believed that these urns are representations of deities, or, at the very least, of venerated ancestors impersonating deities. They all have specific attributes that likely are associated with specific gods, and were likely involved with religious rituals meant to contact such gods (Lind 2015: 53). Ancient Mesoamericans believed in multiple types of souls. Each soul has its own properties and locations where it can be found within the human body. One soul recognized by several civilizations is the animal coessence, a soul shared between a person and their companion animal. This soul was referred to as the nahualli by the Aztec and the way by the Maya Hehmeyer 3 (Monaghan 1998). The existence of this type of soul is of great significant for the pieces analyzed in this paper. Mesoamericans also had a concept of animacy, something that is closely related to the souls but was applied much more broadly to the natural world. The capacities of sight and breath, for example, were seen as clear indications of animacy. It is for this reason that many Aztec pieces, including WAM 1966.52, contain indentations at the locations of the eyes and inside of the mouths. Stone or shell insets would have been placed within such places. With such insets, an inanimate object can see and/or breath, and therefore is on the way to being an animate being. For sight, this concept goes the other way as well. To be animate, something must not only see animately, but also be animately seen: giving something the appearance of vitality was also necessary to make it so (Bassett 2015). These pieces may seem like artwork to western audiences, but to the ancient Mexica and Zapotec who made and used these objects, they were sacred living things, a means of interacting with the gods. This paper explores how the forms and meanings of these pieces closely align with the natural world, and how they so effectively convey the animacy and divinity that Mesoamericans saw in everything. The Composite Animal: The Nahual of the Morning Star WAM 1966.52 is an Aztec volcanic stone sculpture (Figure 1). Little is known of the piece’s origin. The sculpture is similar in style to two other known Aztec animal sculptures, both also of unknown provenance (Figure ). These sculptures all share a smooth connected relief style, stylized spiraling ears, intended eyes, and talon-like claws. The exact use of these Hehmeyer 4 sculptures is not known, though one could speculate that they were kept in temples as minor effigies. The piece has been given the title “Composite Animal” because of its chimeric makeup. Most noticeably, the body is covered with protective plates like an armadillo. It features the segmented anatomy of the nine-banded armadillo, Dasypus novemcinctus, but most closely resembles the body of the northern naked-tailed armadillo, Cabassous centralis, with a cusp to its plates, and long claws (Figure 5). But what about the head? Its sharp carnivorous teeth, round spiraling ears, and a raised but stubby nose are certainly not traits of an armadillo. When purchased, a curator at the Worchester Museum of Art identified the head as that of a dog (Worchester 1966.52). While it does not seem that the Mexica creator intended to represent a dog’s face, this assessment is not entirely incorrect. The face of the animal closely resembles that of the free-tailed or mastiff bats of the Molossidae (Figure 6a), so called because of the resemblance of their face to that of certain breeds of Old World dogs. New World dogs, however, do not share appearance with these bats nor with the sculpture (Figure 6d). It is also possible that this is the face of a vampire bat, subfamily Desmodontinae (Figure 6c), which had special significance amongst the Mexica due to its habit of drinking blood, the medium of the tonalli soul and the material sacrificed to the gods. While the armadillo does not have any known religious meaning among the Mexica, one god is known to take a bat form. In an analysis of Aztec codices, Seler identifies four versions of the planet Venus, one for each of the four quadrants of the Mesoamerican Earth. The Eastern form is a “bat man”, as seen in the Precolumbian codices Vaticanus B, Borgia, and Fejervary- Mayer (Figure 7). This bat god wears articles of Quetzalcoatl, and is always seen holding Hehmeyer 5 sacrificial victims. In the Codex Borgia, the bat god makes a sacrifice by the use of a throwing spear, while standing next to the sun god Tonatiuh (Seler 1902: 197). The imagery of the throwing spear—demonstrative of a moving celestial body—and the sacrifice to the sun allowed Seler to identify this easterly bat god as Tlahuizcalpantecuhtli, god of Venus when it is visible in the morning. The appearance of Venus as seen from Earth demonstrates why Tlahuizcalpantecuhtli has these traits. Venus is an inferior planet; it is closer to the sun than Earth. As such, it would appear to move with the sun across the sky if it could be seen at all times. However, the brightness of the sun generally prevents Venus from being seen. Instead, Venus is visible from Earth at two times, depending on the stage of its 582 day cycle. When on one side of the sun relative to the Earth, Venus appears as the evening star. As the sun sets and the sky darkens, the evening star Venus becomes visible in the west above the sun. Trailing behind the sun, it slowly dips below the horizon over the first one to three hours of the night. When on the other side of the sun, Venus appears as the morning star. The morning star appears in the east at the end of the night. It rises upwards over the horizon and is followed one to three hours later by the sun, which gradually brightens the sky until Venus is no longer visible (Cain 2015). Venus as the morning star was understood to be Tlahuizcalpantecuhtli by the Aztec. Venus moving above the horizon was interpreted as Tlahuizcalpantecuhtli exiting his home—the underworld—followed by a sacrificially re-energized Tonatiuh. Current literature relates Tlahuizcalpantecuhtli to the bat but not the armadillo. However, Tlahuizcalpantecuhtli is not the only Mesoamerican Venus god. Working with the Mayan Dresden Codex, Finley identifies the morning star Venus as a way of five gods. Each god holds a spear which he is about to throw, and the glyphs next to them relate to the sunrise. Quetzalcoatl Hehmeyer 6 was introduced to the Maya during the Post-Classic, and these gods are likely impersonating Quetzalcoatl’s Morning Star Tlahuizcalpantecuhtli form (Finley 2005). One of these Maya Venus gods is God L. Kerr and Kerr identify the armadillo as the way of God L based on several Maya vases and a figurine: in most portrayals, God L actually bears resemblance to an armadillo, with a shell-like cloak, a long nose, and claw-like fingers (Kerr and Kerr 2006: 78).