The Feathered Serpent Pyramid and Ciudadela (ca. 150–250 CE) comprise a monumental architectural complex of Teotihuacan, Mexico (ca. 100 BCE–800 CE), the largest city of the Indigenous Americas. The Ciudadela consists of four connected platforms that measure about 1,300 feet to a side and bound a large plaza. It is located in the southeastern quarter of this possibly-planned city where it encloses the Feathered Serpent Pyramid on its eastern border. The Feathered Serpent Pyramid was the third largest temple platform of the site after the Sun and Moon Pyramids. Though this complex is not as tall as the Sun and Moon Pyramids, it possibly required more planning and labor to build. This is owing to the intricate program of monumental sculptures carved on the Feathered Serpent Pyramid, as well as the dedicatory offering of around 100,000 artworks and precious objects interred beneath it. Additionally, the sacrifice of an estimated 200–260 individuals, 137 of them archaeologically documented, was carried out before construction of the pyramid began. Scholars have interpreted residential complexes abutting the north and south sides of the Feathered Serpent Pyramid as the possible palaces of early Teotihuacan rulers. Thus, some have hypothesized that the sacrificed humans found at the pyramid may have served as retainers for a dynastic founder. Others view these sacrifices as dedicated to a deity known as the Feathered Serpent, or to the pyramid itself.
Iconography
The façade of the Feathered Serpent Pyramid employs a building profile called talud-tablero, which features an overhanging tablero, or horizontal panel, that rests atop an inward slanting talud. At Teotihuacan, the tablero incorporates an inset rectangular panel surrounded by projecting moldings. The pyramid’s taludes show feathered serpents in profile that meander through depictions of mollusks and conch shells. This same scene repeats at larger scale on the inset panels of the tableros, though here the heads of the feathered serpents project towards the viewer as they pass through flowers that are thought to portray mirrors. Slate mirrors figure prominently in the Teotihuacan archaeological record, and this tradition spread throughout much of Mesoamerica. A very fine carved mirror back (00.5.991) from Late Classic (ca. 600–900 CE) Veracruz in the Metropolitan’s collections evinces the longevity and geographic reach of this artform. Another object in the Museum, a fourth-century ceramic censer (1999.484.1a, b) from the Maya region, shows a lord seated cross-legged behind a mirror while wearing a similar, slightly smaller mirror in a headdress. A second mythological animal head rests atop the body of each feathered serpent of the Teotihuacan pyramid’s tableros. The monument originally incorporated an estimated 300–400 of these alternating sculptures, which measure about three feet in height and are tenoned to project approximately three feet from the side of the building. A smaller stone feathered serpent head (00.5.111) is housed in the Museum.
Though iconographers agree that the feathered serpent is shown on the temple, the second head, which takes the form of a geometricized reptile, has been identified as either Cipactli, a crocodilian creator deity, or Xiuhcoatl, a fire serpent of war. Only the feathered serpent possesses a body on the pyramid, which sculptors represented in shallow relief as a curving arc of feathers that terminates in a slightly abstracted rattle. The more squarish head lacks a lower jaw, leading to its identification as a headdress, possibly a crown or war helmet.
Feathered serpent iconography later became more widely disseminated throughout Mesoamerica. A ceramic whistle (1978.412.80) in the Museum’s collection from eighth- or ninth-century Veracruz shows a feathered serpent worn as a headdress by a humanoid deity. Because of their locales of most frequent occurrence, the seashells, quetzal feathers, and rattle snakes of the façade may have respectively evoked the distant Atlantic and Pacific coasts, the Guatemalan highlands, and Central Mexico. Sculptures emulating those of the Feathered Serpent Pyramid have been found as far away as Copán, Honduras, located 900 miles to the southeast.
Offerings
Excavations at the Feathered Serpent Pyramid demonstrate that early Teotihuacan was warlike and capable of summoning large quantities of imported resources. Oxygen isotopic analyses indicate that the human sacrifices deposited beneath the pyramid originated in several distinct regions of Mesoamerica. Nonetheless, most individuals buried in the program resided in Teotihuacan for a significant duration prior to their deaths, long enough for their bone compositions to reflect adjustment to Teotihuacan’s diet. Their sacrifice was accompanied by the burial of an unprecedented quantity and diversity of precious goods that included jade and greenstone sculptures (some similar to Museum objects, including 1979.206.585, 2012.530.1, and 00.5.1437), obsidian blades (akin to 1994.35.468), fine ceramics (some with parallels to Museum objects, such as 1994.35.50 and 1979.206.364), rubber balls, hematite mirrors, seeds, plants, and seashells.
A Space for Public Gatherings and Rituals
Scholars have hypothesized several ritual activities that may have occurred at the Ciudadela. The complex possibly served as the location of large group gatherings, for as many as 100,000 people, the full adult population of the city, could have fit comfortably within its large plaza. Additionally, the tunnel beneath the Feathered Serpent Pyramid shows watermarks, indication that the plaza of the Ciudadela may have been ritually flooded. It has also been hypothesized that the Ciudadela may have served as a ballcourt for the Mesoamerican rubber ball game, a sort of gladiatorial sport of sacrifice and symbolic warfare. Archaeologists excavated from the pre-Ciudadela stratigraphy a razed structure resembling ballcourts found elsewhere in Mesoamerica. A stone sculpture (1980.418) in the museum’s collection may have been used as a Teotihuacan ballcourt marker, while a ceramic vessel in the form of a yoke (1970.138a, b), or specialized protective belt worn during play of the ballgame, from Guatemala shows Teotihuacan stylistic influence.
Layout
Though the Feathered Serpent Pyramid is the largest temple of the Ciudadela Complex, fifteen additional temples are embedded into the Ciudadela’s borders, four each on its western, northern, and southern platforms, and three to the east. On the northern, southern, and eastern platforms, the smaller temples face inward and were formerly linked by a border wall. The Ciudadela’s sole public entrance sits on the western border, where the four temples face outward with no indication of a perimeter wall. Because its form was highly defensible, it is conceivable that the Ciudadela was closed to ordinary Teotihuacanos on most days and opened to the public only for special presentations of ritual or sport.
Modifications
About a century after its completion, the surviving western façade of the Feathered Serpent Pyramid was buried behind a stepped platform called the Adosada. This termination has been interpreted as manifesting a shift in Teotihuacan’s internal governance, though the construction of this new platform may have alternately been intended as a respectful act of ritual caching. While the complex was regularly maintained, after about 350 CE no major alterations occurred at the complex until most of the city’s center was sacked and burned in the middle sixth century. At an unknown date, assailants attacked the sculptural program of the Feathered Serpent Pyramid on those three sides of the structure not covered by the Adosada and three burial chambers of the monument’s dedicatory program were emptied.