Coatlicue

Coatlicue ("Serpent Skirt") depicts the Aztec earth goddess in a form designed to inspire terror and awe. The basalt sculpture shows a decapitated figure whose neck spurts two serpents forming a face, wearing a necklace of human hearts and hands with a skull pendant, and a skirt of writhing snakes. Created around 1500 CE, the 8.4-foot statue captures Aztec beliefs about the earth's dual nature as life-giver and destroyer.

According to myth, Coatlicue was mother of the gods, impregnated by a ball of feathers while sweeping a temple. Her existing children, seeing this as dishonor, tried to kill her, but the war god Huitzilopochtli emerged fully armed from her womb to defend her. The statue was buried after the Spanish conquest and discovered in 1790 near the Sun Stone, then reburied because its power disturbed viewers.

Coatlicue now stands at the Museo Nacional de Antropología.