‘Old Friends’ Stolen From Museum Remind Us of Symbols’ Importance

The theft of 173 artifacts from the National Museum of Anthropology in Mexico City has shocked and horrified the archeological and artistic communities, but it also affects all thinking people. It reminds us of just how important objects and symbols are to our society.

The pieces stolen from the museum on Christmas Eve have generally been called “artifacts,” sometimes “relics”--both terms highlighting their origin in ancient Mexican cultures. But they are also works of art, prized for their aesthetic quality, and have additionally become cultural symbols, both of pre-Columbian peoples and for the Mexican nation.

As archeological artifacts, the pieces are considered as evidence in the scientific investigation of ancient American culture. Since they have been thoroughly recorded and their archeological context has been fully described, one archeologist said that, from a purely scientific point of view, their current value is negligible; they have given us all the information, all the evidence, that they can. But these objects stand out from broken potsherds or other common bits of material culture, for they were among the prized treasures of Mexico’s ancient rulers. They are great works of art that can continue to convey aesthetic messages to us, and they cannot be replaced by photographs or replicas.

Individually, the stolen pieces are the best of their kind. Most of them are unique, and many are so superb that they are without comparison in all of world art. Some of them have taken on the roles of national and cultural symbols, and their loss is felt in all of these realms.

The jade mosaic mask from the ancient city of Palenque in Chiapas, for example, was the death mask of Pacal, Palenque’s greatest ruler, who in the 7th Century initiated the design and building program that made Palenque the loveliest of all Maya centers. Pacal’s tomb was the focus of his architectural and sculptural ambitions. Above a vast monolithic sarcophagus he built the Temple of the Inscriptions (as it is now called), which then became the orientation point of other structures. Pacal had his death mask and other burial ornaments fashioned of jade because it was the most precious material to the Maya.

When Pacal’s tomb was discovered in 1952 by eminent Mexican archeologist Alberto Ruz Lhuillier, it completely changed the view of Maya rulers and Maya ceremonial centers. Lhuillier’s discovery, in establishing that some temple pyramids had been built to cover the tombs of rulers, reemphasized a comparison with the Egyptian pyramid tombs.

Pacal’s funeral treasure is a fundamental part of this revelation about Maya rulership and architecture. Thus Pacal’s jade mask not only represents what was aesthetically desirable in Maya culture; it also has a fundamental role in our understanding of ancient Maya society. More than a special work of art, it is a marker of history.

Several other objects stolen from the anthropological museum are nearly as famous as Pacal’s mask. The gold found in the sacred cenote , or well, at Chichen Itza in the Yucatan had been thrown into it by Maya priests as offerings to various deities. Gold is scarce among the Maya, having been introduced into the area from lower Central America only around the year 1000. Most of what remains of Maya gold is what was recovered from Chichen Itza.

Other objects of gold and jade stolen from the museum had come from tombs in the state of Oaxaca, from the Zapotec (100 BC-AD 900) and Mixtec (1000-1520) cultures. One of the most fabulous pieces is the mask of the bat god--an intricate configuration of individual pieces of jade exquisitely carved. To today’s viewer, it still exudes a supernatural essence that it must have held for the Zapotecs.

Since almost all of the Aztecs’ gold was melted down and destroyed during the Spanish conquest in the 1520s, we look to the tombs of contemporaneous Mixtec rulers for examples of what Aztec gold would have been like. Now, many of the Mixtec works are missing.

Many of the pieces stolen from the National Museum of Anthropology are “old friends.” They are pictured in all the books on ancient Mexican art, and are familiar to almost everyone interested in pre-Columbian culture. They are among the peaks of aesthetic achievement of the native cultures of the New World, and they represent to all of us the high civilizations that developed independently in the Western Hemisphere. They are national treasures and national symbols for Mexico, and they are important for all Americans because they are uniquely American.