’ART & SOUL
City of gods

More than 400 objects are on display at the hugely successful exhibition on Teotihuacan, which is currently doing the rounds in Europe, says B. N. Goswamy

"We don’t know who built it, how it was governed, or what happened to cause it to collapse. .... We have more questions than we have answers."

— Miguel Baez, Curator, on Teotihuacan

Painted Mask in Ceramic. Teotihuacan; classic period

Exactly on this day, the 21st of March, when the Spring Equinox occurs, hosts of visitors, steeped in ancient beliefs, descend on Teotihuacan, not far from Mexico City — the site of one of the most mysterious civilisations of the American continent — to absorb its strong energy. For here, close to 2000 ago, was built by a people who still remain an enigma, one of the grandest monuments of its kind in the world: a ‘sacred city’ larger than any in all of Europe then. The city, home to some 200,000 people, was laid out according to a cosmic view, with a main road, the Avenue of the Dead, running straight towards the mythical Pyramid of the Moon. Close by lay the Temple of the Feathered Serpent and the Pyramid of the Sun. But all these names were not given to the monuments, or even to the city, by the people of that civilisation themselves.

For those people, mysteriously, all disappeared, leaving no trace of themselves — except their monuments and their magnificent art — no records, no decipherable script, no references. What caused this decimation — internal strife, invasion, disease, or hunger caused from over-intensive use of the land, as some keep guessing — remains unknown. And it was the Aztecs of the region who, several centuries later, long after Teotihuacan had been abandoned and left crumbling, discovered the place and gave it this name, meaning, in their own language, "the place where Gods were born".

Till nearly recent times, the place remained covered with thick vegetation; but it was rediscovered and started being excavated. Even now, however, only 10 per cent of this 22-sq-km site — one of the largest archaeological digs in the world — has been uncovered. This being the massive scale of the place, it is almost impossible to form a clear idea of the impression it makes — or must have been made when intact — in real life. Something falls in place when one realises, for instance, that one of the monuments — the Pyramid of the Sun — is the third largest pyramid in the world, just two notches below the great pyramid of Giza in Egypt. When it was built, in ca. 200 AD, it was some 63 m tall and 215 m square. Along with the Pyramid of the Moon — the two echoing the shape of the mountains surrounding the valley — it served as the focal point for Teotihuacan’s urban layout. As was noted, after the excavations carried out in 1971, directly under the Pyramid of the Sun was discovered a tunnel-like cave, "ending in a cloverleaf-shaped set of chambers, apparently the scene of numerous ancient fire and water rituals".

And it is this cave — caves being a key part of symbolic imagery associated with creation myths and the underworld — which may have been a "place of emergence" — the "womb" from which the first humans came into the world in central Mexican thought.

It has been surmised that it was at these tiered pyramids, most specifically the Pyramid of the Sun and the Temple of the Feathered Serpent that grand public rituals were observed and large-scale human sacrifices took place. There may be no definitive evidence as to which deities the Pyramids of the Sun and Moon were dedicated, but that these were places of worship is reasonably certain. The Pyramids, as has been pointed out, are situated at points which the later Aztecs recognised as being of astrological significance, for many phenomena of mythological importance could be viewed from their heights. It has been established that the main sacred buildings, situated at the heart of the citadel, were positioned and constructed according to astronomical criteria, enabling the inhabitants of Teotihuacan to live in relationship with the most significant astral phenomena: Equinox celebrations or the prevalence of the polar star at night, for example.

As one can see, each time one speaks of Teotihuacan — the name is pronounced as tay’-uh-tee’-wah-kahn — one knows that one is at the point of being engulfed in a mysterious, priest-dominated world of which one understands remarkably little. It is a world peopled by feathered serpents and sacred jaguars, overbearing spirits and other worldly beings. And yet nearly everyone is drawn to it because of the dazzling quality not only of the architectural monuments of the civilisation, but also of the artefacts that let one peer into the minds and the skills of those lost people of Teotihuacan: sculptures in stone and ceramic and terracotta, whole walls filled with exquisite murals, lapidary jewellery and decorated work-tools, incense burners and ritual masks.

There is enormous fascination for this world. One sees this in the astounding success of the exhibition on Teotihuacan, which is currently doing the rounds of Europe. Conceived by the National Council for the Culture and the Arts of Mexico, and National Institute of Anthropology and History, this exhibition opened late last year at Paris, at the Musee de Quai Branly in Paris, something that the French considered an honour.

To receive the "relics of one of the greatest pre-Columbian civilisations", as a journalist put it, was in fact "an exceptional honour". From there, it travelled to Zurich, opening at the famed Museum Rietberg where it is currently showing. After this it will travel to Berlin, and so on.

More than 400 objects make this exhibition up at the head of which stands an "architectural sculpture" of a sacred jaguar, more than two metres in height and hypnotic in its gaze. Very few can erase the image from their minds for it roars and whispers at the same time, opening up dark tunnels in the heart, making its insidious way into chambers that one did not know existed. The more than 2,35,000 visitors who saw the exhibition in Paris would probably testify to that.

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