Mirrors in Mesoamerican culture
[4][nb 1] Early mirrors were fashioned from single pieces of iron ore, polished to produce a highly reflective surface.
[5] Mirrors were viewed as metaphors for sacred caves and as conduits for supernatural forces; they were associated with fiery hearths and pools of water because of their bright surfaces.
[7] Among the Maya of the Classic period mirrors were a means of communication with otherworld entities, as depicted in scenes painted on ceramic vessels.
[14] A painted mural from Teotihuacan, now in the De Young Museum in San Francisco, has a representation of a mirror containing a glyph representing a piece of jade jewellery.
[19] The ringed eyes of the central Mexican rain god Tlāloc may have represented mirrors from representations at Teotihuacan in the Classic period right through to the Aztecs at the time of Spanish contact.
[24] Some mirrors bear traces of stucco, which was probably painted, or cinnabar, a red mineral that is often found in association with elite burials in the Maya area.
[9] This ritual scrying was the continuation of an ancient divinatory tradition with its ultimate origins in Preclassic shamanistic practices that had been formalised by the Maya priesthood.
[4] The earliest stone mirrors in Mesoamerica pre-date the rise of the Olmec civilization, with examples being dated as far back as the middle of the 2nd millennium BC.
[29] At Paso de la Amada, a Mokaya site in the Soconusco region of southern Chiapas, iron ore mirrors were excavated that have been dated to between 1400 and 1100 BC.
[32] During the Early and Middle Preclassic periods (approximately 1500 to 500 BC) the Olmecs fashioned mirrors from iron ore, including minerals such as hematite, ilmenite and magnetite.
[3] Mirrors were manufactured by using sand or some other abrasive material such as hematite powder to polish the iron ore until it produced a highly reflective surface.
[35] The incomplete slate back of the earliest known Maya mirror was excavated from Cahal Pech in Belize; it was dated to around 600 BC, in the Middle Preclassic.
[36] By the Middle Preclassic period the production of high status stone artefacts, including mirrors, was probably already being carried out by specialist artisans.
Among items excavated were partially worked blocks of ilmenite and mangnetite and a fragment of mirror, together with tools and San Lorenzo style ceramics.
[44] The concave lenses of some of these iron ore mirrors are able to project camera lucida images onto a flat surface and can also be used to light fires.
[50] Circular mirrors at Teotihuacan were associated symbolically with eyes and faces, flowers and shields;[6] they are quite frequently encountered during excavations in the ruined city.
[54] Circular elements adorned with a feathered border detail are extremely common in the iconography of Teotihuacan and are found in diverse mediums such as ceramics, monumental sculpture, figurines and murals.
[51] Mirrors had a great many symbolic associations at Teotihuacan; they could represent human eyes, faces, caves, passageways, spider webs, flowers, shields, the sun, a fiery hearth or the world as a whole.
One mirror in the Teotihuacan style has a representation of a goddess on the back that is flanked by pairs of burning torches; fire signs cover her body.
A scene depicted at Teotihuacan shows a mirror covered with a net and flanked by a waterlily and a cotton plant, symbolising water and weaving respectively.
[60] Among the Classic Maya, mirrors were considered to be used jointly by gods and mortals, as evidenced by scenes painted on polychrome ceramic vases.
[28] A mirror back from Kaminaljuyu sculpted with an ornate volute design apparently derived from the Classic period culture of Veracruz on the coast of the Gulf of Mexico.
[63] Another vase has a scene involving a group of elderly gods; one of these is applying makeup while using a mirror held up to his face by a female helper.
This scene is unlikely to represent the application of cosmetics in a modern sense, since the reflection provided by an iron ore mosaic mirror was unlikely to be of great use due to the distorted image it presented.
[9] Tikal Stela 31 includes mirror imagery in the Teotihuacan warrior garb of king Yax Nuun Ayiin depicted on its sides.
[69][70] K'awiil was a deity who was associated with Maya divine kingship and the royal lineage and bears attributes that were later inherited by the Aztec Tezcatlipoca, or "Smoking Mirror".
[47] In the Postclassic period (c.AD 900–1521) mirrors continued to be worn over the back in Central Mexico; they were called tezcacuitlapilli in the Nahuatl language of the Aztecs.
[72] This form of Mesoamerican mirror was widely distributed during the Early Postclassic, with examples being reported from Chichen Itza in the northern Yucatán Peninsula and from Casas Grandes in Chihuahua.
[77] An Aztec hemispherical iron pyrite mirror in the collection of the Musée de l'Homme in Paris has a sculpted representation of the wind god Ehecatl on its convex back.
They view mirrors as supernatural portals and link them symbolically with the sun, moon, eyes, faces and flowers, much like at Teotihuacan during the Classic period.
